The Rangers are tied for first with the Oakland As on August 10th.
It is simply remarkable that this team without Lance Berkman and Nelson Cruz is actually generating more offense without them than they had been with them.
Jon Daniels traded for Matt Garza giving up Mike Olt, CJ Edwards, Justin Grimm and a player to be named at a later date.
I stated previously that this team was perfectly positioned to either be sellers or able to acquire basically anyone they wanted at the deadline. I also pointed out the team should use those resources to acquire pitching and more pitching.
I am extremely thrilled about this Ranger team heading into the playoff push. The team is deep and playing well together.
How are they doing it?
Well as I said before, pitching and more pitching. They have only given up more than 4 runs once in their last 9 games.
Yu Darvish has given up 4 runs total in his last four starts with the team losing only one of those games that was July 27th when the team lost 1-0 to the Indians.
Derek Holland has thrown at least 7 innings in four of his last five starts while giving up no more than 3 runs. What is more impressive about that stretch is the fact Holland did all that against teams with winning records (Oakland, New York, Baltimore and Detroit).
The Rangers have won 3 of the 4 games newly acquired Matt Garza has started however he has given up 3 more runs in his three starts. But I like that Garza eats innings tossing at least 7 innings during his brief time in Arlington.
Rookie Martin Perez has been impressive winning back to back starts against the Angels tossing over 13 innings giving up just 3 runs. Perez has gotten his strikeouts up since last season while reducing his walks to go along with his advanced mental toughness to pitch out of trouble.
I would not be concerned about that rotation going up against anyone in the AL playoffs and that doesn't even include a bullpen that is lights out. Thank you to Neil Cotts who has been absolutely dominating not just against the lefties but all hitters period. Factor in Tanner Scheppers who has settled into the set up role and not fazed him as a 26 year old rookie. I worry about the workload Joe Nathan continues to be on but that is where Joakim Soria comes in and outside of one awful outing against the Angels, he's been good as well.
Pitching is the key and this team is set up nicely for a playoff push to follow the formula set by the recent world champion Giants. The wild cards in this could be September returns of Matt Harrison and Neftali Feliz but this team doesn't NEED them to, it would simply be a bonus.
While pitching is the key, any little league kid can realize you have to score some runs to beat the other team. This offense slowed and then darn near stopped in late July. But this offense has suddenly found it
They have scored an average of 6.5 runs per game in August with at least 5 runs a game since Cruz was suspended.
Where has this offense come from?
A change at the top of the lineup. The worst leadoff hitter in baseball, Ian Kinsler moved to the 3 spot in the lineup on July 29th. Since then, the Rangers offense scored more than 3 runs in all but 2 of those games, 9 of 11.
Leonys Martin has moved nicely into that leadoff spot but isn't killing the ball hitting only .283 in his last 10. However he has hit safely in 8 of those games. The difference has been Elvis Andrus, he's hitting .366 since July 30th and reached base safely in 9 of his last 10. Both are capable of being a terror on the basepaths and not a liability like Kinsler who's been thrown out 7 out of 15 attempts.
The lineup could use some help and hopefully Alex Rios can provide some of that or Lance Berkman can return to the lineup but right now, they are playing great baseball and don't NEED them.
