The Rangers are waiting for Corey Seager to shift into Beast Mode. The Rangers just finished a brutal stretch of seventeen games in seventeen days, with the final ten of those games on the road in Houston, Detroit, and Atlanta. Texas went 8-9 in that stretch, including 3-4 at home and 5-5 on the road. It just seemed like it was worse. The offense has yet to click, and it’s mainly because there is a huge hole in the heart of the lineup. Corey Seager is showing the effects of getting a late start in spring training after coming back from surgery. He was coming off what was, by far, his best offe ..read more

Evan Carter leads off the fourth with a solo home run that ignited the Rangers offense. The Rangers salvaged one game out of the three in Atlanta. That’s actually a good thing. Beating Atlanta is hard, the Braves are the best team, by far, in baseball.  The best part was, when it looked like the Rangers would fold, they actually got back up, dusted themselves off, and thrived. Instead of falling three games in a row, and following under .500 for the first time in Bruce Bochy’s Texas Rangers career, the Rangers fought back. It was conforting to see. Down 3-0 after five batters, it looked l ..read more

Was bringing in Jon Gray from the bullpen a cry for help from Bruce Bochy? So, after twenty-two games, do the Rangers officially have a bullpen dilemma? Tied 2-2 against the much more superior Atlanta Braves, the Rangers went to their bullpen after Nathan Eovaldi struggled finding the strike zone and piled up a pitch count. But, being the ace he is, even though he had issued six walks, a hit batter, and five basehits in 5.1 innings, he had allowed only three runs. But then manager Bruce Bochy did something curious and quite telling. He brought in starter Jon Gray instead of any of the alleged ..read more

Another satisfied three-home-run night customer, courtesy of Jacob Latz. Are you a backup catcher who is only playing because the regular catcher is injured? Are you a catcher who nobody pays attention to on a team that nobody cares about? Do you need that one big, monumental day at the plate that you can be remembered for in an otherwise forgettable career, without the harmful effects of Barry Bondsing it? Do you need a special game you can talk to your grandkids about one day? Well, friend, you’re in luck. The Texas Rangers Anonymous Catcher Appreciation Department is heading to your town. T ..read more

Jack Leiter’s numbers might not look great in his major league debut, but he deserved better. It started off well enough. He struck out the first batter he faced. And the third. He allowed two baserunners in the first but didn’t break, getting out of it without a run scoring. The second inning was a different story. Staked to a 4-0 lead, he threw his fastball over the heart of the plate too often, and it got hit. For a single. For a double. For a triple. And for another single.  When the onslaught was over, the score was tied 4-4. But when the Rangers scored two more in the top of the th ..read more

Jack Leiter makes his major league debut today. This day seemed like it would never get here. Jack Leiter is finally making his major league debut today in Detroit. He was the second pick in the first round of the 2021 draft, after a brilliant but COVID-shorted two-year career with Vanderbilt, where he was 13-4 with a 2.05 ERA.  But since that time, he has not only stalled, he actually seemed to go backward.  He struggled at Double-A Frisco in 2022 and in 2023. So, the Rangers shut him down, put him on the developmental list, and totally rebuilt his game. He came back for one start a ..read more

Where is the gas? Where is the power? In this anemic streak the Rangers are in, the only way they are going to score is if they get three hits in an inning. That means they can get only one run an inning, maybe two. But the big inning, that’s not going to happen with a bunch of singles. The Rangers are eighteen games into the season and Corey Seager has one home run. Marcus Semien, Jonah Heim, Evan Carter have two. Josh Smith, Wyatt Langford, and Leody Taveras have yet to hit one.  The Rangers aren’t hitting many doubles either. It’s a total void of power. A lot of power hitters across b ..read more

Kirby Yates picks up the first of what will hopefully be many saves for the Rangers. Have the Rangers found a closer? When they signed Kirby Yates early in the offseason, it didn’t get the fanfare that Josh Hader’s or Craig Kimbrel’s signings got. But Yates had been a successful closer. An All-Star, in fact. He made the All-Star team with San Diego in 2019 as a closer, racking up forty-one saves. Then, he got hurt in 2020, had Tommy John surgery in 2021. Got into only nine games with Atlanta in 2022, and had a good season as a setup man for the Braves last year. The budget-minded Rangers snagg ..read more

Michael Lorenzen makes his Rangers debut tonight against Detroit. Since starting the season 6-2, the Rangers have reversed course and gone 2-6 their next eight games. Two losses to Houston, two to Oakland, two more to Houston. It’s been a lack of offense, no clutch hitting, very little power, bullpen failures and, just when they needed another great start from the usually dependable Nathan Eovaldi, he gives up five runs in six innings. Right now nothing is working. And their best starter to date, Cody Bradford, just went on the IL with a back injury. It’s the oldest adage in baseball: You can ..read more

Andrew Heaney walked four and allowed four hits in 4.2 innings of frustrating pitching. It’s easy to blame yesterday’s loss on a bullpen collapse. After all, that’s exactly what happened. Andrew Heaney was in trouble all game, walking Astros, giving up hits, loading the bases. While he was able to get out of it, he wasn’t even able to get through five innings, being pulled from the game with two outs in the fourth inning, with the Rangers up 2-1. Jacob Latz came in, allowed the tying run to score. Then in the seventh, Jose Ureña allowed seven runs to score to bury the Rangers. But the real cul ..read more