Fresh off his 130-pitch marathon through the Detroit lineup last Thursday, Yu Darvish looked a lot like he usually looks when he doesn’t have “it”. He made it through 6.0 innings — on 101 pitches — but wasn’t nearly as sharp as we’re accustomed to seeing in 2013. He did surrender just the 1 run on 5 hits, but he posted 3 walks and only 56 of his 101 pitches (55.4%) went for strikes.

Even despite all this, after the game Darvish insisted he didn’t experience any adverse effects from his last start. On being taken out before the 7th inning, he said, “I wanted to keep pitching.”

Gamer.

Acknowledging Darvish’s off night on the bump, the Rangers still only trailed by 1 run. For almost the whole game. At home, facing Oakland’s 5th starting option — who possesses fringe-average stuff on the hill — and the Rangers managed three whole singles on the night. None of the runners reached 2nd. The team left two men on base in 9.0 innings of offense.

At least tonight we don’t have to complain about them being bad with runners in scoring position.

Regardless of how you want to paint it, since Sunday night’s offensive barrage against Detroit, Texas has scored 2 runs on 9 hits, and have drawn 2 walks — in 2 games. That’s not going to get it done.

The loss moves the Rangers to 29-17 and for the 2nd night in a row they cede a game in the standings to the A’s.

In tomorrow’s series finale, Ross Wolf will be making his Major League debut as a starter in wake of the news that Nick Tepesch came down with a blister. Jarrod Parker and the A’s will be going for the sweep.

The loss moves the Rangers to 29-16, with Justin Grimm and Yu Darvish rounding out the last of the 7-game home stand.

In his MLB starting pitching debut, Lindblom (0-1) allowed 4 runs on 7 hits in 4.2 innings. He walked 2 and forced 4 punch outs.

Ironically, this would have been the ideal night to leverage Derek Lowe in his long relief role, but he was designated for assignment earlier in the day to make room for Lindblom on the 25-man roster. The Rangers’ decision to designate Lowe comes as a mild surprise, for two reasons: (a) The Rangers commited $1.25 million to Lowe before the season started — which didn’t make sense to me — when they could have plugged in virtually any of the upper-level arms to fulfill the same role (while earning the league minimum), and (b) because a pitcher like Joe Ortiz, for example, still has options left. In theory the Rangers could have tucked Ortiz away at Round Rock, thus keeping Derek Lowe on the Major League roster in an attempt to extract some value from his contract.

Instead, they are splitting ties with the veteran right-hander, who, having allowed 13 runs in 13.0 IP in 2013, becomes a sunken $1.25 million cost. Before you wonder why I’m making such a big deal about a million dollars and change, I’m really not;

This isn’t like paying $16 million to watch Michael Young boot ground balls and hit into a double play every other plate appearance. Derek Lowe is a mere footnote pinned side-by-side to Michael Young’s contract.

Reading between the lines, this move also signifies a silent confidence the Rangers have in pitchers like Joe Ortiz, Michael Kirkman, and Cory Burns; it shows the organization believes more in the talent of their respective arms than in whatever veteran presence Derek Lowe brought to the table.

Either way, by August the safe money is on none of the aforementioned pitchers being on the big league roster. With Joakim Soria and Neftali Feliz returning from injury at some point along the road, and with the likelihood that Jon Daniels goes out to acquire a high-leverage arm on the trade market, the bullpen will have a completely different complexion by season’s end.

* * *

Lastly, I’d be remiss not to encourage you to keep the victims of the Moore, Oklahoma tornado tragedy in your thoughts. At the current time the death count is at 51, though the rubble is sure to expose dozens more in the coming days.

My good friend Ian, who I co-host the Warning Track Power podcast with, currently lives in Moore; I was incredulous when he gave me the blood-curdling play-by-play after he made it safely into Oklahoma City.

Anyway, hug your loved ones.

And somehow, the Rangers took 3 of 4, vaulting their record to a best-in-baseball 29-15; with Oakland coming to Texas tomorrow, the division lead stands at +6.5 games.

It was a warm, windy night in Arlington on Sunday. Before the game started I sensed the only thing that would keep it from being an all-out slugfest was the quality of the starting pitchers — Derek Holland and Doug Fister — but even they weren’t up to the task. Neither made it through 5 innings and between them they combined to throw 219 pitches.

Holland gave up 4 runs on 8 hits, yielding 3 walks (yuck) in just 4.2 IP. It bumps his ERA up to 3.30 on the season, though part of me just wants to say, yeah, well, shit happens on weird weather nights like this in Arlington. The other part of me says this is 3 below-average starts in a row for someone of Derek’s caliber, so we may be witnessing some regression compared to how ace-like he was in his first 5 outings.

Conversely, the Ranger offense has slowly been creeping up the league leader-boards in recent weeks. Heading into Sunday night’s game where they plated 11 runs on a season-high-tying 18 hits, they were 6th in MLB in wRC+ (104) and 3rd in wOBA (.339).

And strangely, in a lineup with no Josh Hamilton and no Mike Napoli, the Rangers are leading the American League in home runs with 58 — the 58th being struck by Murphy on a two-out, 3-2 pitch that he lifted into the right field seats, giving the Rangers a lead they ultimately would not relinquish.

On Sunday, The Rangers’ 2-3-4 hitters combined to go 9-13 with 2 2B’s, 1 HR and 8 of the team’s 11 RBI. Geovany Soto added 3 hits and a near-grand-slam fly out to Andy Dirks, who barreled across the warning track into the wall to rob him; Mitch Moreland added two more hits, and currently leads all the Texas regulars in wRC+ (140), and is tied with Ian Kinsler in total fWAR (+1.1).

Lastly, since we’re beyond the 1/4 marker in the season, let’s take a look at who we’ve played and who we’ve beaten. In bold I will indicate which series’ we’ve won; I’ll italicize the splits, and leave the series losses in normal text like you are reading at this exact moment.

@HOU

LAA

TB

@SEA (4)

@CHI (Cubs)

SEA

@LAA

@MIN (4)

CHI (White Sox)

BOS

@MIL (2)

@HOU

@OAK

DET

Basically, if we look at each series like it’s a game itself, the Rangers have a series record of 9 wins, 2 losses and 3 ties.

Something my dad used to tell me was “Win 2 out of 3 at home and play .500 on the road and you’ll make the playoffs.” [It equates to about 94 wins.] Getting older, I never know how much of what he told me were baseball secrets that only he had figured out, or if it was already common knowledge for everyone. Either way, that’s back when I used to soak up any baseball-related information like a worn sponge, so it really doesn’t matter how I drew my conclusions. Baseball was ripe and still so much fun to learn about.

Currently, the Rangers have the best record in baseball (29-15), the best run differential (+54), the highest odds of making it to the postseason (88.8%), the largest division lead (+6.5 games), and the best record at home (14-5).

Tomorrow things get even more exciting with the Oakland A’s in town, and Jurickson Profar as the starting 2nd baseman for your Texas Rangers.