Thinking about the what ifs

The Texas Rangers started off the month of September on a fierce pace to lose over 100 games.  Over their first 10 games they only managed to win 1 game and would only 6 games against teams with a record below .500.  Three of those games are against the Houston Astros who the Rangers have been struggling with.

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But, recently the team seems to finally be firing on call cylinders and are winning ball games.   In fact, it appears that after their 7-game winning streak and winning 5 of 6 against the Oakland Athletics and Los Angeles Angels they might not lose 100 games this season.

They managed to sweep a mediocre Atlanta Braves team which wasn’t a huge surprise.  But, beating the A’s and the red-hot Angels was a surprise.  The team finally did something they’ve struggled with all season and that is to have good starting pitching and to score runs.

That raises a few questions about this team.  Would they have played this well earlier in the season if Tim Bogar was the manager instead of Ron Washington?   In my opinion Ron Washington did a great job with this team and their losing record wasn’t because of him.  The major issue with the Rangers losing record and their epic worst season since the 70’s is because of injuries and the revolving door in the clubhouse with the constant influx of different players to band-aid the team.

Another question you could ask is how would the Texas Rangers do if they had this lineup all season long.  Probably about the same, but maybe not dead last in the league.  They have a lot of talent on this team and clearly some of it will be with them at the start of 2015 season.  Right now though everything is working for the Rangers.  Every player seems to be hitting well and hitting often.  That’s helping to finally drive in runs.  But, they still lack power in the lineup and still need development with several players in the field.

It has been nice to see them finally win some game and some series.  Even better to seem them at least play spoilers this season against the A’s.   At this point you should enjoy the last homestand and not worry about the what ifs.  What’s done is done and Ron Washington put it best…That’s they way baseball go.