Jon Daniels is throwing stuff at the walls

This season isn’t going as expected for Jon Daniels and the Texas Rangers this season.  Many picked the team to reach the playoffs, some said they had the best lineup in the American League and some even said they expected to see them in the World Series.

Once the calendar flipped over to 2014 the injuries started to pile up.  Most everyone expected there to be question marks surrounding Colby Lewis and Matt Harrison, but no one would have guessed plethora of injuries that would happen this season.

Starting in June the writing was on the wall, this team was in for some hardship.  To make thing worse, the month of July was even worse with their starting pitching doing horrible and the team only had 6 wins.

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Early this week Jon Daniels announced that Alexi Ogando and Tanner Scheppers wouldn’t be returning this year.   That leaves room for him to tryout several other options from the minor league system.  At this point it seems like he’s throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.  We’ve already seen some of his experiments such as Joe Saunders fail.  He’s even tried to build from the bullpen with Robbie Ross Jr, Tanner Scheppers and Alexi Ogando, all of which have failed.

So far this season the team has used 33 different pitchers, 2 of which are Mitch Moreland and Chris Gimenez.   With just under 2 months of the season remaining he’ll continue to bring up several other pitchers from the minors to see who will be an option for next season.

He’s already brought up one pitcher that will likely be part of the rotation next year.  Nick Martinez was promoted this season from class-A ball to double -A.  He had a short stay at Frisco before the Rangers brought him back up, mainly due to the lose of Martin Perez.  He only has a record of 1-7 with a 5.07 ERA but he’s has some very good starts and has showed a lot of promise.

Who will he bring up from the minors?  He’ll likely give Robbie Ross Jr another chance to be a starter.  He’s starting to bounce back with the triple-A Round Rock Express and is able to pitch deep in a game.  Also, Luke Jackson is another likely pitcher he’ll bring up.

No one expected things to be this wheels off with injuries this year, and it’s hard to point fingers and blame any one person for it.  Sometimes that how things go in any sport.  But, at least the Texas Rangers have a great general manager that is able to bring up from the farm system several top prospects to see what will work next season.