Kole Mining

 

The Rangers spent the offseason bulking up on contracts, but they're circling third and Martin Perez is having the best year of his career? What year is it??

I'm still of the opinion that the Rangers have made it to third in spite of the Mariners rather than because of their efforts. They've been alright in the past few weeks, but them being alright and the Ms being bad says less about them and more about the M's. With the last few days of Mariners baseball, including Kyle Lewis's return and Taylor Trammell's copious doubles, it feels like they could be on the way back up, and for a pretty alright team like the Rangers...that could be a sign that things might revert back to the way they were.

And look, things have definitely improved in the last few weeks. Kole Calhoun's now hitting .265, Sam Huff and Eli White are affirming the prospectors' hopes, and now Josh Smith his doing major contact work in his first few games. Martin Perez has a 1.42 ERA, and is a degree of unhittable that he couldn't even muster in his initial upbringing in Arlington. And the barrage of Brock Burke, John King and Joe Barlow has become an incredible bullpen trio that has been stopping offenses all season. 

But...you look around at this team and you see a lot of people not playing as well as they should. Marcus Semien is having a major disappointment of a year, only hitting .199 with ONE home run. Last season in Toronto he was hitting up a storm, and he's barely scratching the surface of that now. And so many acquired young players, like Nick Solak, Andy Ibanez, Willie Calhoun, Dane Dunning, Spencer Howard and Kolby Allard, have failed to have any substantial part in this team. Even Jonah Heim, who's had a pretty nice come-up year, is making some errors behind the plate.

This isn't a very fully formed team, and a lot of the pieces aren't fitting together. Even Adolis Garcia, last year's home run beast, only has 8 right now. A lot of energy has disappeared from even what worked last year. 

I could be very wrong, and this team could prove to be better than the Mariners in the long run, but the Mariners have proven to have a stronger youth movement, and now that the pieces of that are joining together, they could outrun Texas in no time. However...the Rangers have surprised me before, and they could do it again.

Coming Tomorrow- A foundational piece for a team that apparently isn't a last place team after all.