Texas Rangers: 4 impressions from the series against the Tampa Bay Rays

Texas Rangers vs Tampa Bay Rays Impression #3

Day by day and week by week the Texas Rangers bullpen continues to improve. Take out the Spencer Howard outing on Friday night and the rest of the bullpen put up all zeroes on the board. John King had 2 2/3 scoreless innings on Friday night, Josh Sborz and Will Smith combined for 2 2/3 scoreless innings to close out the win on Saturday. Then on Sunday it was Jose Leclerc, Grant Anderson, and Yerry Rodriguez who combined for 4 2/3 scoreless innings. King, Sborz, Smith, Leclerc, Anderson, and Rodriguez combined for eight scoreless innings in the three games.

That is an impressive weekend. The only significant pitchers who did not see action this weekend were Brock Burke and Cole Ragans. I would expect both will be available tonight against the Angels in relief of Dane Dunning. This team still needs relief help at the deadline and Alvin Garcia in this article goes into reasons why. The pen might have enough juice to get to August without completely falling apart. That is about as good as can be hoped for.

The bullpen was melting down in late April and into mid-May. Since the three city road trip that took them through Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Detroit the bullpen has been much better. It has continued into the month of June. Fans are complaining much less about the quality of the pen and this group of pitchers are producing results.