Rangers fail to sweep Twins.

In tonight’s loss the Ranger dropped the final game of the four game series and the possible sweep.  Cliff Lee pitched five innings in tonight’s game giving up 7 hits and five runs with 1 walk and five strikeouts.  Unfortunately the Twins starter Francisco Liriano was just a little bit better pitching 7 innings giving up five hits and 2 runs to pick up his 12th win of the season.

It is still pretty impressive that the Rangers took three out of four games from the Twins, which could potentially become a playoff match.  The Twins are still leading the Chicago White Sox by 3.5 games.  If the season were to end today, the Rangers would face off against the Yankees or Rays with the Yankees or Rays having home field advantage.

The Twins would then face off against which ever one of the teams in the East that takes the Wild Card.  The Rangers have had a little bit of trouble with A.L East opponents being swept by them four separate times this season.  I believe the Rangers are on a roll and should be quite rested up when Nelson Cruz and Ian Kinsler come back from the disabled list.

In other news today, I read an article in which there is a reports in which the Rangers are interested in the Dodgers outfielder Manny Ramirez.  There is a lot of upside to Ramirez and downside.  For starters we all saw how he left Boston and how he declared that this would be his last year in Los Angeles the first day at spring training.

He has the ability to hit for power, in his career he has a .313 average with 554 home runs.  This season he is also hitting .313 with 8 home runs, although he has been on the disabled list three time this season.  Two of those times were calf issues.  The thing about the waiver wire is that the Dodgers have to expose him to waivers.

It starts at the bottom of the teams respective league, so in the case of Manny it will start in the National League with the Pittsburgh Pirates having the first chance to claim him off of waivers.  If the player passes through his respective League it then goes to the other league starting with the last place team, which in the American League is the Baltimore Orioles.

It then will work it’s way up until they get to the first place Yankees or Rays.  The reason I went into so much detail is that the Chicago White Sox are also reportedly interested in Manny and they have a worse record than the Rangers.  So they have an opportunity to claim him before the Rangers do, which would kill the opportunity for him to come to Arlington.

Granted if the White Sox decide to pass and the Rangers claim him off of waivers, the Dodgers have three options.  Option 1 would be to work out a trade for him with the Rangers.  Option 2 would be to basically give Manny to the Rangers, that includes the player and his remaining salary/contract.  The final option would be for the Dodgers to just pull him off of waivers and not be able to trade him for the rest of the season.

So granted the trade deadline was last month, there is still the possiblity of a trade being made in August.  Once rosters expand on September 1st, a player has to have been traded to the team at the point or they are ineligible for the post season roster.  I do believe that it is highly unlikely the Rangers will acquire Manny or any other player for that matter.  The Rangers have a roster to contend deep into the postseason, so there is no reason to worry.