My adoptive team, the Texas Rangers, is in first place, eight games ahead of the Oakland Athletics. The Rangers are 74-58. Looks good, doesn't it? It's not. Here is how the Rangers have fared this season, by month:
- April: 11-12
- May: 15-12
- June: 21-6
- July: 14-13
- August: 13-15
That's right; the Rangers have had one good month. And get this. Thirteen of the Rangers' 21 victories that month came against bad or mediocre National League teams: the Milwaukee Brewers, the Florida Marlins, and the Pittsburgh Pirates. (The Rangers were 13-2 against these teams.) If you subtract June from the Rangers' statistics, you get a 53-52 team.
The point is that this is not a good team. The Rangers will probably make the playoffs, but they will probably be swept, whether by the New York Yankees or by the Tampa Bay Rays. Yesterday's game was typical of the team's ineptitude: the Rangers blew several leads and lost to the minor-leaguish Kansas City Royals, 10-9, on a wild pitch in the bottom of the ninth inning. The team has two reliable starters (Cliff Lee is not one of them), an unreliable bullpen, no clutch hitting, shoddy defense, and poor baserunning. At least two key players (Ian Kinsler and Nelson Cruz) are injury prone. It pains me to watch the games.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 