Rangers reaction is ready to call it: Jonathan Lucroy is good

Let’s get right to it. Jonathan Lucroy is good at baseball. If we didn’t already realize that he made the point loud and clear again Friday night in the Rangers’ 8-5 win over the Tigers.

Lucroy was 3 for 4 with two homers and five RBIs.

It’s his second two-homer game with the Rangers and the eighth of his career. Unless Lewis Brinson turns out to be the next Willie Mays and/or Luis Ortiz becomes the next Pedro Martinez I think the Rangers will be satisfied with this trade for quite a while.

(Yes, I know there’s another player to be named later still in the air. So what?)

Oh, and Carlos Beltran, who also came over at the trade deadline, continues to show why the Rangers wanted to add his bat to the lineup. The guy is still hitting like he’s half his age (he’s 39). He roped a solo homer just inside the right-field foul pole in the fifth. It’s his 24^th, which leads the Rangers. Mitch Moreland also homered, his ninth since the All-Star break. He now has 20 this season.

Three thoughts from a late night win:

1. Yu Darvish comedy – Now and again, Yu Darvish will flash a biting sense of humor. Usually he’s taking a friendly shot at a reporter. During Friday’s game, however, he went dark. When manager Jeff Banister visited the mound during the seventh inning to see how his right-hander was doing, Darvish joked that "his ligament was about to tear." Banister smiled (probably nervously!) while Darvish quickly told him he was fine. Darvish earned his first win since June 3 after allowing two earned runs in 6 2/3 innings. He threw 107 pitches, the most he has thrown since 113 on Aug. 9, 2014.

2. Delayed gratification – The start of Friday’s game was delayed two hours, 42 minutes because of rain. First pitch wasn’t until 9:45 p.m. It’s the longest delay at Globe Life Park since Sept. 6, 2014 when a game with the Mariners was delayed for 3:13. First pitch that night was 10:18 p.m. Statistical oddity: Both these rain delayed games lasted exactly three hours. Friday’s delay is the second-longest delay for the Rangers in 2016. Their June 28 game against the Yankees in New York was delayed 3:35.

3. Errors in perspective – It can be hard to keep a baseball season in perspective when your team can often look less than stellar during a long, 162-game season. Even Friday’s win included two errors and three other unmade defensive plays that probably had a few hairs on Banister’s head hitting the dugout floor. But the reality is the Rangers are a pretty good defensive team. They’ve committed 72 errors and have a .984 fielding percentage, which are both near the middle of the pack. But their defensive efficiency ratio, which is the ratio of a team’s defensive outs recorded in defensive opportunities, the Rangers rank eighth at .696. Not surprisingly, seven of the top eight teams in the ratings are leading or near the top of their division. Also, there were a couple of stellar defensive plays Friday to go along with the miscues. Shin-Soo Choo made a sliding catch on a shallow blooper in right field in the second and Mitch Moreland snared a line drive down the first-base line to end the top of the eighth.

This story was originally published August 13, 2016 at 3:15 PM with the headline "Rangers reaction is ready to call it: Jonathan Lucroy is good."