Rangers Celebrate 2011 World Series Clinch – Courtesy of MSN FOX Sports

Anyone who plays baseball can tell you, it’s a grind. Six months is a long time to wait to see if you are going to make the post season, and for a fan, sometimes it is easy to lose site of the bigger goal. Fans expect perfection night in and night out, and that just doesn’t happen in any sport, but especially baseball. The Texas Rangers have raised the expectations of their fan base over the past three seasons by appearing in three straight post seasons including two trips to the Fall Classic. Ranger fans are hungry for more, and the Rangers are delivering so far in 2013.

The Rangers have had some patches where they look  bad offensively so far, and they have had some pitching blunders as well. As fans watch every night to see what the Rangers are going to do, it is easy to get frustrated with the way a certain player may be playing that night or the way that Ron Washington makes a pitching decision. But before you decide whether to jump off the band wagon or not remember a few things:

1. Perfection is not the goal. If perfection were the goal, than pitchers like Justin Verlander and Felix Hernandez would win every year. While it is okay to desire your favorite player or team to try to play error free and mistake free night in and night out, don’t expect it. If you do you will be disappointed more often than not. The Rangers have been far from perfect in 2013, and yet they still sit atop the entire American League with the best record. Being consistent is much more important than being perfect.

2. Pitchers need to keep the team in the game. I know that we all want to see every pitcher go out every night and give up no runs on two hits while striking out 14 and walking no one, but that is simply not going to happen. Even Yu Darvish gives up bad home-runs from time to time, and he is far and away the ace of the Rangers staff. Pitchers are going to have good games, and pitchers are going to have bad games. Fans have to realize that a quality start is way more important than a perfect game. If you have a consistent starting pitcher, your offense knows what it needs to do to win. And win they will.

3. Win or split the series. Believe it or not, the Texas Rangers are not going to win every single game they have left to play in 2013. They are gong to lost fifty plus more games. Rangers fans need to realize that while trying to win every game is important, winning every game is not crucial to going to the post season and World Series.  Winning the series is important. For example, if the Rangers go .500 for the remainder of the 2013 season, they would wind up with a record of 87-75, which may be good enough to win the West. But I believe that they will do better than .500 for the rest of the season. Which means that number is going to only go up. The Rangers have a great chance of winning at least 90 games again this season and a pretty good shot at 95, in my opinion. If they win 95 games, it means they will lose 47 more games in 2013. As fans, it is important to remember that.

4. Rest players. In 2012, the brass admitted that they let too many players play too many games and they got tired. If Rangers fans want their team to return to the fall classic in 2013, they need to remember bench players  are there for a reason. To rest the starters. It is not the end of the world if Adrian Beltre gets a day off against the Royals or Mitch Moreland gets a rest against the Diamondbacks. The Rangers may even lose a game or two because of an error directly related to a starter getting rest. That is part of baseball. Sometimes the manager has to make the tough roster decision, and fans need to remember that most of the time, Ron knows what he is doing. Rangers fans need to give him the benefit of the doubt, not rip him every time there is an error by a bench player.

5. Play as a team. Here the Rangers have the advantage over many other teams, but especially the Angels. The Angels are a collection of great offensive talent, but from my outsiders view, they don’t seem to really care much about the other guys on the team. They are about individual results. The Rangers seem to have fun in the dugout and on the field. Elvis and Beltre come to mind right away. The Rangers seem to legitimately care about each other, and that breeds winning. The Rangers have picked each other up several times this season, and I believe that trend will continue.

The Rangers have a great shot of getting back to the World Series this season. They are way better than they were projected to be by most, and the American League does not appear to be as strong as it has been over the past few seasons. There are going to be some amazing games, and there are going to be some really ugly games going forward. As long as there are games in late October, I can live with that. Rangers fans should be able to as well.

The Marniers can pitch, we all know that. And at home they can pitch even better, plus the Kingdome is a tough place to get hits, as it is known as one of the most friendly pitchers ballparks in all of  baseball. Seattle is a middle of the road team pitching overall this season (4.32 ERA) but that changes at home. The Mariners as a pitching staff have an ERA of 5.17 on the road, but that drops to 3.26 at home. As far as their offense goes the M’s come into this series with a .239 batting average as a squad overall, but they have a .255 average at home. So, like most major league teams, the Mariners play better at home than they do on the road. Seattle is never an easy place to go and win a series, no matter how the Mariners are playing season wise.

Tonight we will get Rangers yongster Justin Grimm (3-3, 4.02 ERA) who has struggled a bit in his last three starts, going 1-2 with a 6.48 ERA against Joe Saunders (3-4, 5.64 ERA) who is lights out in Seattle, posting a career ERA of 1.72 in the Kingdome, and this season he has an ERA of 0.94 in the friendly confines of home. This will be a tough assignment for Justin, because of the way Saunders performs at home. He is a perfect 9-0 there in his career. Of course, before we all freak out and call this game a loss, we must also remember that Saunders is 3-8 with a 6.30 ERA in his career (13 games) against the Rangers. The Rangers are going to need to get the offense going in this one to win the game, and they can’t count on the home run ball because we all know that is rare at the Kingdome.

Saturday the Rangers put Derek Holland (3-2, 3.30 ERA) on the bump to face off against Felix Hernandez (5-3, 2.07 ERA). Can I make a side note here? I have always had a lot of respect for King Felix as a pitcher, but I wish he would learn to wear his hat straight! It bothers me to no end that a professional player cannot wear his hat straight! But I digress. We all know what King Felix can do, and we all know what Holland is capable of. We just have to sit back and watch and hope that the good Derek Holland comes through and wins the game for us, or at least keeps us in it. Saturday should be a very low scoring affair.

Sunday has Nick Tepesch (3-4, 3.98 ERA) going up against Hisashi Iwakuma (5-1, 2.37 ERA). Tepesch started the season great but has not done a whole lot of late, and he has the blister issue that kept him out of his last start. I hope that he is over that, because Iwakuma is having himself quite a season so far. This could be a tough game for the Rangers to win if Tepesch cannot limit damage early in the ballgame. All in all, it really depends on how the Rangers offense comes through on how well this road series winds up.

With Mitch Moreland and Adrian Beltre on the tear that they seem to be on right now, and Murphy starting to come around and look more comfortable at the plate, now is the time for this offense to kick it into gear and remind all of us what they are capable of doing. This team can play small ball, look at the speed of guys like Elvis Andrus, Leonys Martin, Craig Gentry and Jurickson Profar. They need to find ways to get it done when the home run ball just is not happening for them, if they cannot find ways to manifacture runs, this could be a very long three game series we are all about to watch.

Yu Darvish

The Rangers and Detroit are about to face off in a four game set this weekend, but that is now what everyone is talking about. Everyone is talking about tonight’s match up of Rangers ace Yu Darvish verses Tigers ace Justin Verlander. It is a highly intriguing match up, that is unless you are an offensive player in this game. Baseball reference tells us that Yu is 6-1 with a 2.73 ERA. He has pitched 52.2 innings, struck out an astonishing 80 batters while walking only 18. He has a whip of 0.911, a SO/9 of 13.7, a WAR of 1.5 and a RAR of 16. Darvish is in the top five in the AL in wins, win/loss percentage, walks & hits per 9 innings, hits per 9 innings, and strikeouts.

Justin Verlander is 4-3 with a 1.93 ERA. He has pitched 51.1 innings, struck out 57 while walking 18. His whip is 1.208, his so/9 is 10.0, he has a WAR of 2.1 and a RAR of 20. Verlander is in the top five in WAR for pitchers and ERA. So what do all of those numbers tell us? That hits are going to come at a premium in tonight’s game. Both the Rangers and the Tigers are going to have trouble putting the ball in play or even making contact. It should be another one of those stressful, down to the wire type games. I think this is one of the most anticipated games of the young 2013 season so far. In a different way, it is kind of like the game last season when C.J. Wilson came back for the first time and faced off against Darvish. And we all remember how that turned out. Darvish waited out the rain delay and Wilson did not.

Well hopefully there will be no rain delay to worry about tonight, or for the rest of the series for that matter. Tomorrow pits Nick Tepesch (3-3, 4.03 ERA) against Rick Porcello (1-2, 6.68 ERA). Nick has had some ups and downs of late but I trust him to come through at home and get the Rangers a win. Porcello has had a bad season so far, and we can all only hope that continues Friday Night. Saturday has Justin Grimm (2-3, 4.28 ERA) facing off against Anibal Sanchez (4-3, 2.05 ERA). Now that Alexi is injured (that was kind of shocking news today after the way he pitched last night), The Rangers really need the young guys to come through and keep them in games. I hope that both Justin and Nick are able to do just that. Saturday will be tough because Anibal is having a very good season so far.

The Finale of the series has Derek Holland (3-2, 2.93 ERA) coming off of a great start going up against Doug Fister (5-1, 3.06 ERA). If Derek can pitch at all like he did in his last start and limit the home runs, he has a great chance of getting his fourth win of the season, but this is another game that I believe will probably go down to the pen to win, and the Rangers have the better pen.

All in all, this series of two first place teams is shaping up to be a very fun series to watch, I just hope it turns out that way.