Series Thread: Happy Fourth!! Rangers at Boston 7/4-7/6

[PhantomWarrior]

Houston has a cup cake schedule until the end of July. To answer your question, yes I think they can and will keep it up in the short term at least.

Other than Boston we had a 'cup cake' schedule the past road trip and look what happened.

 

[PhantomWarrior]

As long as he gets results I will let others worry about his mentality. He had a bad game and as long as those are far enough apart to keep his ERA respectable then he is probably doing a good enough job. He has his warts and so does just about anyone else that we might trade for. I think sometimes the "grass is always greener on the other side" mentality gets the best of us as fans. The warts on our players seem more prominent because we are viewing them from a lot closer perspective than we are viewing potential trade targets. I just don't see a reason to get too upset at a pitcher whose ERA was about 3.40 before this game. Whatever his mental state is it hasn't kept him from putting up some respectable numbers.

The mental aspect has gotten to some of the players. When you are the first place team some players end up playing cautiously. Some of the players may wave that off but they are thinking about it and how easily it can go away. "Heavy is the crown...."

 

[PhantomWarrior]

I just don't get what happens to this team. They will look great and then have innings like last night where everyone just forgets how to play baseball. I've never seen anything like it. But one of them falters and the rest just crap the bed. Odor screws up, then Elvis, then Beltre, then Elvis. Good grief, when they sucks they SUCK. But when they play great, the play GREAT. Such an odd dichotomy this team is this year. Either winning 1 run games or getting their doors blown off.

I'm sure you have seen something like last night's bad inning. I am reminded of the awful games against last place and struggling teams in 2012 and 2013 where we played like last night's 2nd inning for entire 8-10 game stretches. Now back then it had a lot to do with players being out in the field for 15-20 mins an inning while Tepesch and Grimm (cough Feldmen) tried to figure out how to miss a bat. 2014 I won't compare as that was truly a rebuilding/season ending injury year.