...by the good folks at CardsConclave.com. Some other Texas Rangers bloggers contributed too. Click the link and check it out!
Read more...From the parts of the news conference I heard, in my opinion (and I'm paraphrasing) it was the following Q&A exchange:
Q: Prince, how are you going to deal with the heat in Texas?
A: I don't know, sweat?
Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: A mainstay is gone. And they're going to pay a lot of money for Fielder. A LOT. And Fielder is not what you would call a great fielding 1B. And and Fielder was bad to terrible in the postseason for the Tigers.
Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: Oh yeah, we haven't made the postseason in any meaningful way for a while. So there's that. Let's see if Fielder can help us at least get there. We don't have to watch Kins get caught with his pants down on the base pads anymore. And Profar can play everyday. Furthermore, it's likely a bit (if not a lot) of power upgrade. And apparently DET is going to pay for at least some of his salary.
Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: I like it. Oh yeah, Murph was lost in free agency. Sincerely good luck to him, he was nothing but solid for a while there for our Rangers.
Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: Texas Rangers legend is gone. And the question has to be asked: was Jon Daniels sad to see him go?
Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: Can the drama please be done now? The drama has been going on since last off season when Nolan's title was changed and apparently he was stripped of his powers to make baseball decisions in the organization. I guess good riddance to the drama.
Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: This reminds me of when it was announced that Hank Greenberg was no longer part of the ownership group. When that happened it sure looked like Nolan Ryan was OK with Greenberg going away. Even though Greenberg was the face of the ownership group along with Nolan that bought the team out of bankruptcy. I wish someone (Evan Grant?) would dig up some dirt on how Greenberg leaving the Rangers really went down and why. And then how Nolan leaving went down and why.
Glass Half Empty / Afternoon Cloud: The umpire gave David Price a GENEROUS strike zone and squeezed Perez's strike zone, that was huge, especially early on. That said, the Rangers had to play the game the ump was calling and they didn't adjust and they left their bats on their shoulders a lot.
Rangers had 2 runners (of course they were Elvis and Kins) picked off early (2 of the first 9 outs) on the base pads, can't give up easy outs on the bases in a playoff game and hope to win. The only thing almost as precious in baseball as runs are outs. And the Rangers gifted two outs to the Rays in a playoff game.
Speaking of playoff games, the announcers said about 199 times that this was a regular season game because the stats count towards the regular season and the teams are allowed expanded rosters and it's a tie breaker game to decide who gets to play in a play-in, "one game playoff series" versus CLE. Whatever, it's a win or go home game, it's a playoff game for all intents and purposes. And generally the TNT announcers sucked.
Perez had retired 8 straight when Wash pulled him for Ogando. I disagreed with that move at the time. Pitch around Longoria and unintentionally intentionally walk him and leave Perez in. And if Wash had Perez on such a short leash why wasn't Ogando on a short leash? Wash let Ogando give up 2 doubles and a walk (aside from an intentional walk) before Ogando got out of the inning.
As soon as Longoria hit the 2 run homer to put the Rays up 3-0 I thought that that would be enough for the Rays to win given how bad the Rangers' offense had been against good pitching. 3 runs turned out to be enough with the Rangers losing the game 5-2.
Nellie had nothing. And fittingly he made the last out of the Rangers' season.
Glass Half Full / Silver Lining: Perez did great except for 2 pitches to Longoria. Even with those 2 bad pitches, he had only given up 4 hits and 3 ER's when he was lifted by Wash.
Thoughts / Observations / Sidenotes: That's the season. Lots of injuries, lots of different stating pitchers and they got to this point. Pitching was not the problem this year. Offense was, especially after they lost Nellie. Berkman (Fat Elvis) was a complete bust. They had waaayyyy too many games where the offense put up 0-2 runs and the starting pitching was plenty good enough to get a win with just some half-decent run support.
Even if the Rangers had managed to win this one I really don't think that with the offense struggling they would have made any noise in October. That said, I would have of course loved to see some October Rangers baseball. As the saying goes, there's always next year.
162 games weren't enough. And now the Rangers play the Rays and former Cy Young winner David Price in a one game playoff to have the chance to play in another 1 game playoff versus CLE.
After 161 games the Rangers are tied with the Rays going into the last day of the regular season. It's simple, a Rangers win tomorrow means they at least get to play again. Who and where depends on what the Rays and CLE do tomorrow.
But CLE won't lose. And it probably shouldn't have taken a walk off to win it but that's what happens when your team commits 4 errors in one inning in one game.
Read more...Why won't Cle lose? Rangers still 1 GB in the Wild Card race.
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