The Rangers began the season with these five starting pitchers:
1. Yu Darvish
2. Matt Harrison
3. Derek Holland
4. Alexi Ogando
5. Nick Tepesch
Coming out of spring training we had some questions about these starters. Could Alexi Ogando hold up to a full season of starting? The answer to that is no. What kind of season would Yu Darvish have? A pretty good one overall, although his last start was not very good and his run support since April has not been good. Which Derek Holland will we see? The good or the bad? Well, it has been both.
The Rangers were not expected by most experts to compete, even with those five starters, and now there is only one of those guys left. And yet, somehow, the Rangers are still sitting one game out of first place with Josh Lindblom, Justin Grimm, Martin Perez, Ross Wolf and Derek Holland. The Rangers offense has not been very potent all season either, so this encourages me for the second half of the season.
If the Rangers can hang around like they have and stay right there with the A’s, this should be a really fun second half when the Rangers start getting some of these guys back. I think the Rangers are also showing that they will be contender for many years to come with the way the young pitchers have come through for this team at times. When the Rangers have Colby Lewis, Alexi Ogando, Neftali Feliz and Yu Darvish back, they could start actually winning some games. wouldn’t that be nice. They still have a legitimate shot at being the champions of the AL West and making a post season run, and that gives us all reason to be hopefull going into the All Star break next week.
The Rangers need to finish strong this weekend against Detroit.
