COVID-19 not an excuse for the 2020 Texas Rangers and their offensive offense
COVID has ruined summers, school, and a lot of other details but it has nothing to do with the Texas Rangers.
The 2020 Major League Baseball season is a chaotic, suspenseful mess, and even though this year will go into the trash it does not let the GM/President of the Texas Rangers off the hook.
The most impressive achievement for the Texas Rangers is that no player has tested positive for COVID-19 (yet). Do not let the coronavirus give Jon Daniels a pass on this team, or this season.
Do not let the injuries to Rougned Odor, Jose Leclerc or Corey Kluber fool you. Don’t buy their 9-5 win over the San Francisco Giants on Sunday afternoon in SF as evidence of a turnaround, and imminent climb to first place in the American League West.
On Sunday in San Francisco, the Rangers’ offense snapped out of their historically toilet start by scoring more than three runs for the second time this season. Cue the parade.
Shin Soo Choo and Joseph Gallo both hit long home runs, and the Texas Rangers snapped their two-game losing streak to improve to a gaudy 3-5.
The Rangers blew a 5-1 lead when the Giants tied it in the sixth inning. Texas scored four times in the top of the seventh, three coming on Gallo’s home run.
And the best development for JD’s resume is that the entire season is canceled this week.
The 2020 Texas Rangers are not as bad as their start, but this is not a good baseball team, and that is entirely a reflection of the GM who assembled the roster.
This team wasn’t built for 162, nor is it for 60. It was built for a best-of-five, or best-of-seven series with Kluber, Mike Minor and Lance Lynn starting.
Assuming the season continues and finishes on Sept. 27 as scheduled, don’t be surprised when the Rangers miss out on one of the playoff spots that MLB is handing out like COVID checks.
Blaming Texas Rangers manager Chris Woodward in this era of Major League Baseball is a waste of time. No coach has been as devalued any more in pro sports than the big league ball skipper.
It’s just as well the new Globe Life Field Mall can’t open for you this season; you would not pay to watch this team play.
Fifteen years ago in March of 2020, when the Rangers were preparing for the season in Surprise, Arizona, the club knew it was going to be built around pitching. They didn’t know they would be moving into a pitcher’s park to this degree, so that potential marriage works.
But while MLB shut down every minor league baseball team in 2020, our Rangers are doing their best to give us an offense that plays like one.
This team can’t thrive with an offense that scores runs in “phases.” The Rangers are only in Phase 1 of reopening their offense.
Like every other phase this year, the results are all over the place, subject to debate. Maybe the Rangers’ offense just needs a good dose of hydroxychloroquine.
What do you believe: An offense that in eight games has scored one run twice, two runs three times, and three runs once? Or the offense that scored a combined 16 runs in two games?
The Rangers have two hitters that scare another pitcher, Gallo and Choo.
The rest, while productive on Sunday, are unreliable, or meek.
On Sunday, they took a 3-0 lead in the second inning, highlighted by Scott Heineman’s two-run triple. That gap expanded to 5-1 in the fifth inning on Choo’s two-run home run.
San Francisco tied it in the bottom of the sixth inning on catcher Chadwick Tromp’s two-run home run.
Much to the surprise of everyone, the Rangers’ offense kept scoring, and gave them the win they need.
