Texas Rangers Spring Training Recap: March 6th

Mar 6, 2014; Peoria, AZ, USA; Texas Rangers second baseman Jurickson Profar (13) celebrates a grand slam home run against the San Diego Padres in the sixth inning at Peoria Sports Complex. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

The Texas Rangers took on the San Diego Padres yesterday, and they played a pretty good game. Of course the big news was the Jurickson Profar grand slam that he hit in the sixth inning off of Dennis O’Grady. Ogando went three innings and gave up one run on five hits, making it a much better outing than he had his first time out and lowering his spring ERA down to 3.60. Cody Burns continues to have a rough spring as he gave up a three run shot in the ninth inning, raising his ERA to 20.25.

Neftali Feliz is still the front-runner for the closers spot, but according to Ron Washington on texasrangers.com, it is not decided yet.

"“It’s open,” that’s it. It’s open.”Washington went on to say “Nefi has a new arm and he’s trying to figure it out, hopefully, he gets it done before we get out of here.”"

The Rangers announced yesterday that injured catcher Geovany Soto should be ready to play by March 15. Rangers fans everywhere are looking forward to getting Geo back on track, as we all know that he is the favorite catcher of Yu Darvish and some of us believe that this will be a breakout year for Soto. If nothing else, it will be nice to have another injured Texas Ranger back in the fold and playing again.

Profar is expected to start playing some defense soon and the hope is that his tendonitis issue is finally cleared up. Profar is really missing a lot of time at second base, and it is important for him to start taking reps there or he is going to be very rusty at the beginning of the season. I believe that his play at second base is going to be the key to this defense going forward. Ian Kinsler and Elvis Andrus made an excellent double play combination, and Jurickson and Elvis need to do the same.

The Texas Rangers face off against the Dodgers today at 2:05 Texas time.