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.

Coming into Friday, the Rangers were dealt with some disappointing news when the team learned that Matt Harrison will be undergoing back surgery on Tuesday to repair a herniated disc, thusly relegating his return to after the All-Star break. It was an unfortunate blow to the rotation, however it appears that Colby Lewis is continuing to have a successful rehab and is on schedule to return to the team on June 1st. An effective Colby Lewis in the rotation would be huge, so that’s that. Now here are some observations on the Rangers’ sweep of the Mariners.

• In total for the series, the Rangers outscored the Mariners 23 to 3. Regardless of the competition and other factors, it was good to finally see the Rangers’ offense put together some good innings. We’ll see if this ends up carrying over to Anaheim.
• As of Friday, the A’s led the Rangers for 1st place in the AL West by 2.5 games. As of Sunday, the A’s have been swept by the Rays and the Rangers have swept the Mariners, meaning Texas now holds the division lead by 0.5 games.
• In the first game of the series, Yu Darvish got the win against the Mariners, pitching 7 shutout innings and allowing just 3 hits to go along with 10 strikeouts. It was evident early in the game that Darvish had little, if any command of his fastball, which seems to be a trend in all of Darvish’s starts sans the near-perfecto against Houston. It’s pretty remarkable that Darvish possesses such dominating secondary pitches that he is able to pitch deep into ballgames regardless of his fastball command. Interestingly enough, all three of Darvish’s wins this season have come after Ranger losses.
• On Saturday, the Rangers received a scare when Nick Tepesch was hit on the wrist by a line drive off of the bat of Jesús Montero with two outs in the second inning. Luckily enough, Tepesch appears to be ready to make his next start. In relief of Tepesch, whom had to leave the game, Derek Lowe delivered in surprising fashion with four hitless innings. Also, A.J. Pierzynski and David Murphy, whom have both been scuffling as of late, hit homers to support the cause.
• In the finale of the series, Justin Grimm made his second start of the season and delivered mightily, pitching 6 innings, surrendering just 6 hits and allowing just one earned run to go along with 9 strikeouts. Grimm’s curveball was the difference maker in the game, as Grimm exhibited plus command and break with the pitch. In support of Grimm, Leonys Martín hit his first career home run off of Seattle starter, Aaron Harang. As for Harang, he gave up a big home run in the bottom of the fourth to Mitch Moreland, which sailed to Greene’s Hill in center field. Harang later went on to load the bases in the fifth inning only to surrender a grand slam off of the bat of Nelson Cruz. In other words, it was not a good day for Harang.
• Not to pick on the guy or anything, but Justin Smoak had a dreadful series, going just 1-for-11 with 6 strikeouts. I know it’s still early in the season, but I think that any hope of Smoak’s bat finally developing is all but gone.

First of all I hope that the Ranger pitching can recover from Alexi Ogando’s terrible outing in Chicago and continue to pitch the way they have been pitching all season. The Rangers still have the second lowest ERA in the American League coming into this series (source). The bull pen did fine on the road trip and the starting pitching did well overall, and I hope that trend continues. Tonight when Yu takes the hill he needs to finally break through this mental barrier that he for some reason seems to have when he sees those Mariner uniforms and finally pitch a lights out game against them. It would make Rangers fans delighted to no end and probably boost Darvish’ confidence if he could get that done.

Second of all I want to see more of Craig Gentry than I do Leonys Martin. No offense to Leonys, but I have been less than impressed with him so far this season, and I think Craig has earned more playing time at this point of the season. Leonys has a RAR (runs above replacement) of -0 and a WAR (wins above replacement) of -0.1, while Craig has a RAR of 4 and a WAR of 0.4. Craig also had the game saving catch in the first game of the Cubs series and just seems to have better at bats at the plate and play slightly better defense than Leonys at the moment. I think Ron should platoon less and play Craig more.

Thirdly I would like to see the defense play up to their potential against the Mariners. During the series that was just played in Seattle, there were some very strange errors, including one by the very sure handed and very accurate Adrian Beltre. I don’t know if there is anything scientific that can explain why the Rangers play a more disheveled brand of defense against the Mariners, but it needs to stop. The Rangers need to get back on track and remember with Ian Kinlser, Elvis Andrus and Adrian Beltre, they have one of the best infields in all of the major leagues. It is time they started playing like it series against Seattle.

So what do I expect this weekend? I expect Yu to struggle out of the gate tonight, but get it together pretty quickly and finally pitch a good game against the Mariners. I expect that all three of these games will once again be low scoring, and I expect that the Rangers will take two out of the three since they are in Arlington. I hope that Yu comes out tonight and throws a gem, but nothing in my past experience of watching Darvish hurl against the Mariners has told me that he will. I have enjoyed watching the Rangers new brand of offense when it works, and it has been really frustrating when it hasn’t worked. Lets all hope it works this weekend and the Rangers can win another series and get the series winning back on track after two straight series splits.