Because You're Jung

 

The Texas Rangers swept my team a week ago and I'm still not entirely over it.

The Phils are fine. They're doing better. They're a little more evenly matched against the Reds [odd statement is odd], and have managed to stay on top of things without completely imploding around the 4th inning. But to have the first series of the season be a miserable sweep carried out by, of all people, the Texas Rangers, with a human deGrom, a human Eovaldi and a lot of young guys trying to figure shit out...that's odd. Especially if you're coming off an NL Championship year.

The Rangers may go on to become a mediocre team this year, and I think they probably will be, but I don't know if anything's gonna take the sting out of this for me. First of all, I have seen the Rangers sweep Philly before, in this incarnation, and I was there for one of the games, last year. It was exhausting. Every single XBH went right to Adolis Garcia [as did a few during the opening series this year], and the one Castellanos ball that made it over the fence was idiotically called a double by some umps that are walking proponents from an automated umping system that Manfred would never employ because, I assume, the unions are beginning to scare him. 

What made it even more exhausting was how avoidable it was. Martin Perez was excellent the night I saw them, but there were Rangers pitchers that weren't Martin Perez, and Phils hitters that weren't awful, and nothing happened. This series, it wasn't that the Phils weren't hitting, as they did a lot of that, but the Rangers were getting the better of our pitching in a bigger way. The hitting is gonna be good this season, but if the pitching's shite, and if both Gregory Soto and Craig Kimbrel can't keep runs down, what's the point?

The Rangers, so far, are starting out very similarly to their 2022 counterparts- it's taking a little longer for the big contractual pieces [Seager, Semien, now deGrom] to heat up, Nate Lowe's already on a tear, and the smaller, younger pieces, like Mitch Garver, Bubba Thompson, Josh Jung and, somehow, Will Smith, are carrying the load. This isn't full overdrive yet, and while deGrom's last start was definitely an improvement, he's not quite at the level the Rangers were picturing when they signed him yet [which is something I worried about last season, even]. 

All the while, the first season of Bochy ball in Arlington is going decently so far, though it could be better. It's still early, and there's still times for the Rangers to find other ways to infuriate me in other places in the league. 

Coming Tomorrow [?]: One of the ground floor ex-gaijin fireballers that have reestablished themselves in an even bigger way since coming back to the States.