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THE BOOT STAYS IN ARLINGTON
Texas beat the Astros twice this week to nab the “Silver Boot”, the rotating trophy for the annual winner of the I-45 interleague series. After sweeping the Astros in Houston over Memorial Day weekend, the Rangers took the series five games to one, the first time that either team has won more than four. Texas has now won the Silver Boot in five of the nine years since the inception of the rivalry series, including the last three.
The series saw two milestones of note. Longtime Ranger Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez returned to Arlington as an Astro, and fittingly tied and broke Carlton “Pudge” Fisk’s record for most games caught in the Major Leagues, by catching the first two games of the series. On Wednesday night, Rodriguez received two standing ovations from adoring fans, who appreciate his performance in more than 1,500 games as a Ranger.
Reserve shortstop Omar Vizquel played the Wednesday game and singled to tie Luis Aparicio with 2,677 hits, the most by any native born Venezuelan player. Vizquel at 42 is the oldest position player in the Major Leagues, and he’s still a marvelous defender.
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The series completed a home stand, abbreviated to nine games with a rainout. Despite finishing win two wins over the Astros, the 4-5 record was disappointing. When the home stand began last week, Texas led the Angels by 4.5 games, a lead which has now shrunk to just 1.5.
The home stand also pointed up the flaws in the Ranger offense. Texas has a lot of good hitters and over the course of the season; the team will score a lot of runs. However, it’s not a consistent offense. It relies too much on home runs to score, and doesn’t execute to score runs on days when the long ball doesn’t happen. Ranger hitters are free swingers that strike out too much and walk too little. When the home stand was over, their 521 strikeouts trailed only Cleveland’s 535, and their measly walk total of 190 exceeded only the Mariners (171) in the American League. Their 99 home runs trailed only the Yankees 104 among all 30 teams.
Over the first two months of the season, the Rangers averaged 6.2 runs per game at home. On this home stand, they never scored more than six in a game, which they did just twice. Texas in fact has not scored more than six runs in a game during the month of June.
There is no bigger hole in the Ranger offense than Chris Davis, who is hitting just .201 with a league leading 97 strikeouts, at total that represents 45% of his 214 at-bats. Davis has proved to be a marvelous defender at first base and has 13 round-trippers out of his 43 hits; but 62 games is no small sample size. He presents a dilemma for Ranger management. 2009 was thought to be a year of development of young players such as Davis. Now in June with the Angels having more problems than anticipated, and the Ranger pitching being better than anyone had hoped, the team is squarely in a pennant race. Do they sacrifice the development of a young player like Davis by getting a more experienced bat, such as Nick Johnson, who is rumored to be available from the Nationals? Do they stay the course with Davis? Is staying the course with Davis even in his best interest? Perhaps he’s better off working out his problems in AAA against lesser competition.
The Rangers left for the West Coast after Thursday’s game with cause for optimism, despite the results of the home stand. Closer Frank Francisco is eligible to be activated from the disabled list Friday, and he tossed a scoreless inning at AA Frisco Thursday, requiring just nine pitches to retire the three batters he faced. Starter Matt Harrison was activated earlier in the week and tossed five solid innings against the Astros Wednesday night. The pitching staff is starting to look healthy again. Josh Hamilton should be back next month, and his return will help hitters around him in the batting order. The schedule is more favorable too, as the opponents in the next three series are National League West also-rans – San Francisco, Arizona, and San Diego.
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Texas has held first place alone for 44 consecutive days. It’s certainly a strange year in baseball to see the Rangers looking down at the division in the standings in June, and worrying about their offense instead of their pitching.
By: Richard W. Humphrey
MLBcenter.com Texas Rangers Correspondent
> View all of the 2009 MLB team previews from Pro Baseball Fans
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