Texas Rangers: Colby Lewis Continues To Deliver

The Texas Rangers dropped a series against a team that is 16 games under .500. Not only that but they did this while having, what is assumed to be, their first three playoff pitchers start those games. Of those three pitchers, only one of them performed to expectations.

Colby Lewis took the mound in the final game of that 3 game series versus the Oakland A’s, this was his second start since coming back from the DL. Lewis provided a performance for the Texas Rangers that appeared a lot like the Colby Lewis of 2015 pitch about 6 innings or so and only give up around 3 or 4 runs.

Lewis ended up throwing 92 pitches through 5.1 innings while only allowing 3 hits and 3 earned runs. This is a vintage 2015 Colby Lewis start but while he had double digit wins last year with these kinds of numbers, the offense did not help him out in this performance. 8 hits and 2 earned runs was all that the Texas Rangers offense was able to muster while facing a former Ranger in the A’s Ross Detwiler.

This loss needed to be blamed on the offense because from the past couple of years, this was exactly the stats that you should expect from Colby Lewis. Reliever Keone Kela struggled again allowing 3 hits and 2 earned runs and was only able to make it through 1 inning. A positive was that Jake Diekman and Matt Bush worked a combined 2 innings and only allowed 1 hit through 29 pitches.

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The Texas Rangers magic number did shrink to 5 even with this loss. It does seem that there are some questions again amongst the teams “aces” after this past weekend in which none of them recorded a win for their personal records.

Their seems to be a quite confidence that Yu Darvish and Cole Hamels will be able to turn things on when the time comes. In Colby Lewis’s case their isn’t any panic but there is a concern on if he will be conditioned enough to be able to go 6 or 7 innings deep when its his turn in the playoffs.

The hope would be that Darvish and Hamels do turn things on and will keep the bullpen rested just in case Lewis is only able to give the Rangers 5 innings or so. Ultimately I think the performance that Lewis has provided is just what the Texas Rangers should expect from him.

Never count Colby Lewis out but do understand that his typical outing will be 5-6 innings in which he may allow around 3 runs. With the offense that the rangers have, that stat line should deliver wins regularly.

Next: Texas Rangers: Bullpen The Biggest Question?

Do you have any concerns from this past weekend about the starting rotation? The Rangers have been resting some players and giving bench players more playing time as of late but their bench players can still produce runs.