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.

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.

There’s a specific give and take with the state of happiness, and it’s a product of nature I do not yet believe I’ve fully submitted to. When I’m happy, I don’t have an edge; I can’t muster the same palpable creativity as when I’m upset about things most people don’t even think or care about. I’ll be turning 23 in two weeks, and in all that time I’ve yet to find a balance. The problem is, I’m afraid if I ever do meet an equilibrium with regards to my ecstatic joy and skittishly sorrow-filled relationship with the universe, that it in turn means I will have lost my edge and creative juices. That’s a pretty substantial sacrifice for someone like myself, who already likes the way he is.

With that said, even though it pains me to mention the Rangers’ signing of RHP Derek Lowe, it’s not the type of pain where I could reel off a thousand words in a half-hour. So that’s good.

If Lowe makes the Major League roster (which at this point appears like a certainty), he will earn $1.25 million in 2013 (per Jeff Wilson’s Twitter), and incentives could push that figure up to nearly $3 million (per Evan Grant’s Twitter). However, even though Martin Perez was recently injured, it’s believed that Derek Lowe is on the roster to be in the bullpen. To that end, he’s probably a decent investment, because Justin Grimm — if he is to be the 5th starter — probably shouldn’t be banked on for very many “quality” starts.

From a WAR perspective, even if Lowe manages to earn the entirety of his incentives ($1.7 million + 1.25 million salary = $2.95 million), that’s the FIP-wins equivalent to +0.6 WAR. It’s doable. (And that’s given that each Win Above Replacement is worth $5 million.) Anything over that would generate surplus value in the WAR/$ paradigm.

Was I thrilled with the $1.25 million base salary? Not particularly. I may be splitting hairs — because in the broader scope what is $1.25 million out of a $130 million budget? — but Derek Lowe was not a sought-after commodity. Like Kyle Lohse, it was March 6th, and Lowe remained unsigned. The difference between the two pitchers is that Lohse probably has a couple decent seasons left in him, and Lowe should have kicked the bucket on his baseball career years ago.

With Lowe on roster, it effectively ends the Rangers’ pursuits of either Kyle Lohse or Rick Porcello. I can’t say I’m all that disappointed, but Derek Lowe doesn’t exactly excite me, either. At all. The Rangers appear committed to using a scrub in the 5th rotation spot until Colby Lewis returns from injury.

To sum this article up in a sentence: “Rangers make another boring, cost-effective signing that will probably help the team.”