Ranger Rant: A Look From Both Sides

By Chase Bottlinger               

I won’t name names here because that would be unfair. Over the past month and a half I’m confident there is not one Texas Ranger player who has not contributed to what has been plain and simply ugly baseball, at least by their recent standards. Maybe Tanner Scheppers because well, he just got here.

The saddest thing about the poor efforts day in and day out is that it is causing animosity between the fans. There are those of you who believe that this is just a slump and that they’ll break out of it at any time. On the other side there are those of you who believe that this is the worst thing ever and that they’re going to wind up not even being a contender despite the fact that even with all of the recent failure they still sit four games up with the best record in the league.

Just like I do with most things, I’m riding the fence. That being the case I will first address those of you who feel like this slump is just a passing sour patch that will subside relatively soon. I am on your side in that every team has lulls in their season and struggles for a while. The problem I have is that many of you have been saying this for a while now. Something like approximately the last forty games in which they have a record of 19-21. You’ll probably say “Ok, so they’re a couple of games under. That’s not that big of a deal.” In a way you would be right in saying that, but in another you would not. My concern that they’re under .500 for a stretch that consists of about a quarter of the season is not because of the record itself, but because of the teams it has come against. They’ve lost consistently to divisional foes like Oakland and Seattle, they’ve also lost to the lowly Royals during that time. They say that in baseball that if you beat the teams you’re supposed to beat everything will work itself out. Right now, the Rangers just aren’t doing that and it has me somewhat concerned. Last year one team in this division beat the hell out of the rest of it and ended up winning by a large margin. Now I don’t think anyone with much baseball sense every really believed the Rangers would run away and hide, but if they’d have just won a few of the games that they should have, just a few, they’d be in a much better position right now. People say that these are just games in June so they don’t mean too much, it’s funny though, seems to me every one that you put in either the win or loss column counts the same no matter what time of year it is.

Now obviously there is the other side of me that can see things from the point of view of the optimist. The Rangers on paper are one of the best constructed teams in baseball, they have many strengths and few areas that you can expect to be weaknesses over the long haul. They have a front office that knows how to address the needs of the team whether it be through free agency or the minor leagues or any other channels at their disposal. The fact is though, that they won’t find the remedy for what is going wrong right now in any of those places. The only remedy for the current problems with this team is patience. People who weren’t born with patience weren’t born to be baseball fans. That much is for damn sure. So if you think that the Rangers should deal off the first half MVP at the deadline for a nifty batch of prospects or you think that Wash just isn’t getting through to his team anymore so he has to go…YOU ARE A MORON! Sit back, suffer through this rough spell and you can be around still when things get good again. If not, get the drive the bandwagon you’re all riding in off somewhere and don’t come back.

Now, I just made arguments for both sides so undoubtedly I contradicted myself somewhere in there. If you want to call me on it, hit me up @bcbott67 on twitter.