April 19, 2008
Late Inning Lightning
The Red Sox rallied for three runs in the bottom of the eighth inning tonight to defeat the Rangers 5-3. The Red Sox are saving their best for last this season. From the eighth inning on, the Red Sox batters are 47 for 135, a .348 batting average. They've also picked up 15 extra-base hits, including six home runs.
Sounds ridiculous to say it after three weeks, but the season is already slipping away for the Rangers. There's just not a lot of talent left after the A-Rod, Soriano, Young, Gonzalez and Teixeira giveaways.
The team is headed for a mid-90s loss season based on their (yes, early) run diff. In fact, I think the starting rotation has generally - and unsustainably - overachieved in the early going, so the final tally could be even worse. A 100-loss season is not out of the question.
So the Rangers may be slipping from pretty bad to truly awful. I assume that sooner or later the team will give Nolan Ryan the GM's job...and hope.
They've got some good players but starters are middling and pen is worse. Playing in Texas doesn't help. They need to get some pitching help now but so does everyone else. It's pretty hard to believe they gave up Texeira and none of the players are in the majors. Maybe Padilla wasn't really worth $12M?
