Texas Rangers Losing Ground

The Texas Rangers had a good chance to make up some ground in both the Wild Card race and in the American League West this week with a three city, nine day road trip against division opponents, but they have not done that. After beginning the trip by taking two out of three from the Mariners, the Texas Rangers have now lost the other two series. The Rangers are now 11.5 games back in the West, and it is not even July yet. They are 3.5 games behind the Mariners for third place and only 3 games ahead of the Astros.

As mentioned before on this site, it is tough to expect a consistent style of baseball out of a team that is so young and so inexperienced, but this trip was an important one. The veterans on this team are beginning to get frustrated, as evidenced by the ejection of Alex Rios last night. According to Rios, he did not say anything to warrant the ejection.

"“I didn’t say anything to make him react the way he did. [The ejection is] just unacceptable to me. I said, ‘Clean it up.'” Rios said according to texasrangers.com"

After the Rios ejection the ump decided that he enjoyed throwing out players, and he threw out Michael Choice as well later in the game.

"“Neither of those pitches were strikes, the 3-1 and the 3-2. I said, ‘That [3-2] pitch was down.’ He said it was a strike. I said it was down, and then he tossed me.” said Choice."

The positive out of last nights game was how well Nick Martinez pitched. He went into the eighth inning with the game 1-1, giving his team a great chance to win. That is really all you can ask from Martinez as a fan.

The loss is a tough one to take, but there is another game today and then the Texas Rangers come home to face off against Detroit. I am not going to get my hopes up about the future of this season, but I am still going to enjoy watching Texas Rangers baseball!

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