Oh, the Rangers. There are plenty of teams in baseball who can’t ever be counted out. They’re the teams that play more aggressive small ball, aren’t phased by any player and any legacy, and just plain out play baseball. The great thing about baseball is that every year there seems to be a team who doesn’t seem to belong in the playoffs by everyone’s regular standards. As it stands now, the playoffs would be:
AL:
Yankees
Indians
Angels/Rangers
Tie for wild card: Royals/Rangers/Angels
NL:
Phillies
Reds
Colorado (best overall record in the MLB right now)
Wild card: Marlins
The Indians? The Reds? The Marlins? The ROYALS? Those aren’t teams that cause you to think of the playoffs. Granted, it’s not even may yet. My point is, baseball is a great game. The Red Sox were supposed to be dominant. They really aren’t doing well at all. Minnesota should be doing better for the team they are. Things don’t seem to be as they should be with half of baseball. It’s all discombobulated. Or is it? Who is supposed to be a playoff team? No one can say that but the guys putting on jerseys every day.
Now back to the Yankees and Rangers. I say it’s a bittersweet win for these reasons:
Bitter: Starting pitching, or pitchers in general.
Sweet: Offense. Home run start record.
The bitter: I don’t know how we keep winning with the pitching we’re doing (A.J. and Mo aside) or rather, not doing. If CC didn’t keep getting double plays, we might have lost. The walks hurt. The bullpen job by Joba hurt. The pitching squad cannot keep putting the game up to the offense.
The sweet: The offense. The Yankees last night scored 5 runs, 3 home runs contributed to the score. 27 home runs in the first 14 games is a franchise record. Shattering a record that stood since 1932. We can’t just hit home runs though and I would have liked to see the Yanks take some pitches last night instead of being just a tad trigger happy and popping out.
Conclusion: The Rangers are a dangerous team. They are aggressive. They can hit and they WILL profit on the other teams mistakes. Watch out. The Yankees were in my opinion, very lucky, to have taken that series. I don’t think they played better baseball than the Rangers. What makes it scary is that Texas doesn’t have Hamilton. They’re still just as lethal.
Other news: Justin and I have officially been together a year today. Patience wins on both ends of the situation 🙂
My patience: Him playing endless hours of MY Xbox
His patience: Me watching endless hours of baseball