Where's the offense?

“We feel like offensively we’re trying to keep our head above water,” Young said. “But at the same time, we’ve got a lot of guys with track records.”

Waiting it out

Outfielder Brad Wilkerson rested again on Sunday, but said he hoped his sore left knee would feel well enough for him to play tonight. “I took the whole day [Saturday] off,” Wilkerson said, “didn’t run on it, didn’t do anything on it, just treated it five or six times, and I made a big step forward.”

Defensive adjustments

The Rangers committed six errors in final two games of the series in Seattle a week ago, but have had only two in the last six games. Manager Ron Washington said he doesn’t worry about errors because he believes the Rangers are solid defensively.

“One year in Oakland, we were terrible for about a month,” Washington said. “And [manager Ken] Macha was concerned and asked me ‘What’s wrong?’ And I said ‘nothing’s wrong. We’ve just got to wait it out.’ We ended up leading the league in defense, matter of fact, all of baseball.”

Benoit is ‘bad’

Joaquin Benoit allowed six runs on five hits in one inning on Friday, but Ron Washington didn’t hesitate to use Benoit on Saturday and it paid off. Benoit threw a scoreless inning.

“I just never give up on him,” Washington said. “I just always tell him how bad he is and he responds.”

In using “bad,” Washington meant “good” and when someone pointed out that using bad for good could be misinterpreted, Washington said: “You can use your vocabulary to make it strong. Mine is 'bad.' "

Briefly