NOTES: Kinsler is back from his stint on the disabled list.   Given our offense has been pretty lethargic the last week or so, his arrival could help.  Assuming he doesn’t pop out 70% of the time like he usually does.

Since I dropped cable TV, my ability to keep up with Rangers games has been really impacted.  Those who have followed my site would have heard me rant about that.  However, one thing that also has changed a lot since last season is the fact that I am working again.    That has taken up more of my time than I anticipated.  I tend to work strange hours, and my need to timeshift the games is even more of an issue than it was before.  Before, I could get away with it, because I wasn’t working, and could devote more time to the games, especially since I had to listen to them when they happened due to radio.  Work has impacted that more than I thought it would.

I tried this season to keep it going, but about 3 times, I’ve fallen behind on updates of like 10 games.  When the team has played only 64 – that’s a lot.  When I fell behind most recently, I started thinking of doing the catch up work and quite frankly, I just didn’t want to.  Most of the games during the week I just miss totally anymore.   What time I get in the evenings that I’m not working is now spent with my kids and wife.  That’s NO complaint, just a reality.  They deserve my time more than the baseball games do.   By the time I’m done with them, the games are over.  There’s been a game or two in the last few weeks that I got notified via email it was over, and I didn’t even realize they were playing.   I also realized that I never updated my roster page once the team broke camp back at the end of Spring Training.  That’s fallen way behind, and right now I don’t have really have the desire (much less the time) to go through all that and update it.

Due to all this, I’ve decided this is the time to stop trying to force myself to do daily updates.   The above is why.  However, I’m not stopping cold turkey.  I’m not taking the site down.  I will leave it here, I’ve put a lot of work into this since I started in December 1998.  Going forward, I will still maintain these parts:

• Transactions – Logging the transactions still will allow (force?) me to keep up with changes.   Plus this year I started adding commentary on transactions.  
• “How Many in 2013″.  I’ve rather enjoying keeping track of that the last few seasons.  It ties in mostly to transactions, but I’ve had some nice compliments on that, so I’ll keep doing it.
• Uniform Number History – that’s been a thing I’ve REALLY enjoyed more than any other on the site.  I’ve gotten personal communications from Victor Rojas (when he was here), and Eric Nadel about the usefulness of that, so with those in mind, I will make sure that gets updated going forward.

Plus, when the mood strikes, I’ll say something.   But it’s obvious to anyone that I’ve pulled back, but in my mind I still saw it as something that needed to be updated every day.  By releasing myself from that, I think I can enjoy the thing a bit more, and perhaps not stress out so much about missing bits.   I’m still going to follow the team, I’m still going to be paying attention where I can (given the boundaries I set out above).  I’m still going to be a Rangers fan, and I’m keeping up (the sinkhole in the stadium today – see!! :), just not as visibly on these pages.

Thanks to all who have visited me over the years, and as I said – not going away, just changing focus.

Thanks, and God Bless You!

Joe

I’ve done this for the last five seasons, and it’s worked out pretty well. I’ve also gotten some positive feedback on it, so it’s become a permanent feature here.  If you’d like to see the final tallies for the other years I’ve done this, you can still see them here: [ 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 ]

Anyway, this post will get bumped whenever there is a player who is making his first appearance for the Texas Rangers in 2013.  I am going to count guys who get called up, but don’t play immediately (or sometimes don’t play at all), as they will be part of the 25 man roster officially. So here goes. The most recent additions will be on the top of the list. The original opening day 25 man roster is not in any particular order.

Total players in 2013: 35
Total pitchers used in 2013: 19
Total position players used in 2013: 17
Total players making major league debut: 4

The numbers don’t add up, as David Murphy pitched an inning on Jun 4

• #35 – Kyle McClellan (Jun 9 – replacing Michael Kirkman, who went to DL)
• #34 – Chris McGuiness (Jun 6 – replacing Mitch Moreland, who went to DL)
• #33 – Martin Perez (May 27 – recalled as Player 26 on doubleheader exemption)
• #32 – Neal Cotts (May 21, replacing Josh Lindblom, who was sent to AAA)
• #31 – Josh Lindblom (May 20, replaced Derek Lowe, who was DFA’ed)
• #30 – Jurickson Profar (May 19, replaced Ian Kinsler, who went to DL)
• #29 – Cory Burns (May 16, replaced Alexi Ogando, who went to DL)
• #28 - Robinson Chirinos (May 10, replaced AJ Pierzynski, who went to DL)
• #27 – Justin Grimm (Apr 11, replaced Matt Harrison, who went to DL)
• #26 – Nick Tepesch (Apr 9 , replaced Julio Borbon, who was DFA’ed)

#25 to #1: Yu Darvish, Jason Frasor, Matt Harrison, Derek Holland, Michael Kirkman, Derek Lowe, Joe Nathan, Alexi Ogando, Joe Ortiz, Robbie Ross, Tanner Scheppers, A.J. Pierzynski, Geovany Soto, Elvis Andrus, Jeff Baker, Adrian Beltre, Lance Berkman, Leury Garcia, Ian Kinsler, Mitch Moreland, Julio Borbon, Nelson Cruz, Craig Gentry, Leonys Martin, David Murphy.

Players making their Making Major League Debut are bolded

Roster Notes:

• In 2013, the Rangers have two in the original opening day 25 that were making their major league debuts (Leury Garcia & Joe Ortiz).  The previous years’ counts in that regard were two in 2012 (Darvish & Ross), one in 2011 (Mason Tobin), none in 2010, one in 2009 (Elvis Andrus), and one in 2008 (Kaz Fukumori).
• We have players on an opening day 25 man roster who have never been on an opening day roster before: Leury Garcia, Michael Kirkman, Leonys Martin, Joe Ortiz, & Tanner Scheppers
• We have seven players making their debut as Texas Rangers: Jeff Baker, Lance Berkman, Jason Frasor, Leury Garcia, Derek Lowe, AJ Pierzynski.

NOTES: Michael Kirkman was placed on the DL for a reason you don’t want to be.  Nobody WANTS to be on the DL, but especially not this.  re-occurrence of his cutaneous lymphoma.  Uh, cancer.  That is a big ol’ pile of suck right there.   Will pray for him to get better.  I’ve known a few people with that, unfortunately.   Kyle McClellan, who’s been doing well in AAA lately, gets the call to replace him on the roster.  Joaqum Soria got transferred from 15 to 60 day DL in a procedural move.

• P Alexi Ogando placed om 15 day DL
• P Josh Lindblom recalled from AAA [ Link ]

NOTES: Well, Ogando just came back, and now he’s gone again.  That always strikes me as a “came back too fast” move.  There’s some noise in the press that when he comes back, he might go back to the bullpen – for good.  I thought we had decided this already.  Is he turning into our own Joba Chamberlin?   Lindblom comes back, who hasn’t exactly thrilled me this season.  We’ll see how it goes.

NOTES: Moreland got hurt running the bases, which was a shame, as he’s been doing decently this season.  Didn’t want to lose him, and more to the point his momentum.   Colby Lewis wasn’t progressing as well as expected, so he was moved to the 60 day DL to make roster room for Chris McGuiness, who had his contract purchased, and will be making his major league debut.  That’s always fun, but hate when it comes at the expense of someone else.  Of course, it almost always does.

NOTES: Smokin’ Joe Ortiz (screw that, I’m still using the name) hasn’t been so smokin’ lately, so when it was time for Alexi Ogando to come off the DL, he was the casualty.  Shame, as I’ve liked Ortiz.  But you gotta get the job done.

Although, it was a nice catch by David Murphy to keep the game from ending in the bottom of the ninth when Nathan almost gave up TWO home runs.

Still, I don’t think anyone will have a problem with a 32-18 record after 50 games at all.  :)

Derek Holland: 6.2IP, 4H, 2R, 0ER, 3BB, 10K – W
Felix Hernandez: 5.2IP, 11H, 5R, 1BB, 9K, – L

Done.

NOTES: The claim of Benson is a “yeah OK” kind of transaction to me.  Don’t know anything about the guy.   Harrison going to the 60 day DL, though is more of a concern.  Now I know sometimes guys are moved around like that when room needs to be made for some other roster move, and they’re not really needed to be made.   But there has been some noise lately that Harrison is not progressing as he should, and his being moved to the 60 day DL is not a good sign.  :(

Justin Grimm got the start, and early on I thought he was doing to do OK, if not dominant.   In the end, he did get a technical quality start, having gone 6.2 innings, allowing just three runs.  He did however, allow ten hits – a bit too many.    A “weeble” performance, for sure.

He had some help in the field, by what turned out to be  one of the weirder plays I’ve seen.  It looked like it was going to be one of the old 3-6-3 double plays.  Except for some reason, Justin Grimm had run off the mound in the general direction of first base.  By the time the ball was coming back to first, Moreland was in full stretch mode, and caught the ball.  Or so we thought.   Mariners manager Eric Wedge came out to dispute the play, because he thought Moreland had come off the bag.  It didn’t matter, because Moreland never caught the ball.   Grimm caught the ball for some reason.  Everyone assumed that Moreland caught it, but it turned out not to be the case.  It wasn’t until the thing was shown on replay as to what actually transpired.  Here, look at this video.   It’s really a surprise that nobody saw this – I wager the only two people that really knew what happened in the moment were Grimm & Moreland.

It was shortly after that where I conked out, because I don’t remember much else from the game.   Offensively, we had a few three run innings to account for most of our offense.    It got started in the second when Jeff Baker hit an opposite field two run home run – and not a wall scraper, either.  A good dozen or so rows up into the seats in right.   We followed that up with a three run shot by Lance Berkman in the next inning.  A small ball run in the fourth, and then the other three run inning came up in the 7th.   It wasn’t home run based.  In fact, there was’t much power either, because the inning went single, single, lineout, k, single, walk, single, k.    But all that was enough for the second three run inning, none of which was needed in the final score, but I know nobody who won’t take that.

Most of this offense came against Joe Saunders, a guy we always seem to do well against.

Our bullpen was mostly good.    Except Joe Ortiz, who gave up two runs in his 0.2 innings of work.   He hasn’t been as good lately, and is probably going to get squeezed out when a roster move needs to be made soon.   Perhaps if he didn’t clamp down on the nickname I gave him and ask the media not to use it anymore (“Smokin Joe Ortiz”), maybe…  ;)

We’ll take another win, going to 31-17.

NOTES: I guess we soured on Derek Lowe in a hurry.  I thought he was doing decently early on, and while I won’t say he was great or anything, I didn’t think he was the “holy crap, we need to dump this guy NOW” kind of pitcher.  He’ll probably catch on somewhere.  Mark Teahen is a name I know from playing fantasy baseball the last few years.  I know I had him on a few teams some years ago.  Probably signed as infield insurance, I can’t imagine this is any attempt to bring him in full time or anything.

Ross Wolf who last pitched in the majors before this game on October 1, 2010 as an Oakland Athletic, started for the Rangers, and did quite good.   Now, we’re not talking Yu Darvish in Houston good, but I’ll take what he gave us.   Five innings, allowed just three hits, walked two, and struck out three.  Allowed a single earned run.  He left the game with an economical 71 pitches, which tells me he probably could have gone longer, but he was probably on a pitch limit or something.     While I didn’t see him pitch and couldn’t tell how they were moving and all that, it’s hard to argue with the end result.  Did decently enough, didn’t embarrass himself, will probably get more starts, provided they’re available, as I gather this was one of those “starts of convenience”.

The guys who followed him (Cotts, Ross, Nathan) also held down the fort.  Between the three of them, only Cotts allowed a single hit, and none of them allowed any walks.   So the pen was better than Wolf, who was pretty good himself.

Offensively, it was a 90′s era Rangers offence.   We had three runs, and they all came via a home run.   They also all came in the first inning, too!   David Murphy had a two run home run, and Adrian Beltre had a solo shot.   That was it.  The Rangers offense was done after the first inning.   In fact, after the first inning, we only got three more hits the entire rest of the game – all singles.   So we struck early, and then our pitching kept us in the win column.

Be curious to see how much more Wolf gets to pitch at the big leagues here, as it appears that Colby Lewis might not be coming back any time soon, unfortunately.

This win does make us 30-17, and have the best record in the major leagues at this point, and the best record after this many games in franchise history.   I don’t think after all the losses from last year people were expecting that kind of thing from this team early on.

Dan Straily just shut us down.  Went seven innings, allowed just two hits, no walks, and struck out five.   He left the game with just 88 pitches, too, so I’m not sure why (I was busy working, and wasn’t paying attention to the game) he came out when he did.  But the guys that followed him were just as good.  Two innings of one hit shutout ball by two relievers.  Overall, the A’s pitching line was 9IP, 3H, 0R, 0B, 8K.    It’s hard to beat that, when all you get from your team were three singles (Gentry, Pierzynski, & Profar).

The flip side of that is a hard loss by your pitcher.  Yu Darvish started, and was not as good, although – for his “eh” line, he did get a technical quality start, but his numbers would indicate he should have given up more than he did.  6IP, 5H, 3BB, 1R.  That one run came on a solo home run to Cespedes in the third inning, and would be the only run of the game.   Shame, as he battled well, according to what I see in the recap and box scores, but we were just shut down.

The Rangers bullpen did not allow any runs.  Robbie Ross bent a little, but didn’t break – he was followed by Scheppers, who kept the A’s off the board.  The last reliever was Neal Cotts, who was making his Rangers season debut, after having his contract purchased earlier in the day.   He went a single inning, allowed no hits, and no walks with one strikeout – a perfect inning.   It wasn’t a mop up inning, either – we were down 1-0, and he needed to keep the score where it was, and he did well in his debut.  Good job there by Cotts.

Never like 1-0 losses, you always feel you could have done SOMETHING, eh?    We now have to win on Wednesday, otherwise we’ll get swept at home, something that hasn’t happened in quite awhile.

NOTES: As I wrote the other day, Lindblom was someone whose minor league numbers said he would come up and do decently.   Well, that didn’t happen as such.   He came up, got hit around, and sent back down.   The Lindblom gamble cost Derek Lowe his roster spot, as he was DFA’ed (and not just sent down (granted, 13 earned runs in 13 innings will do that).   Still, Lindblom looked better numbers wise in the minors this year than he did in the spring.   Chirinos was just keeping the seat warm for AJ anyway, so that’s no surprise.    I don’t think Cotts is here long term, either.  We have a doubleheader coming up Monday, and that always means some weird roster moves.  I don’t see Cotts being here past next Monday, if not sooner.

I am however, going to go through the transactions and bring that up to speed, and I already brought my “How Many in 2013″ up to speed.   I did see that the move they made today to get Josh Lindblom up will be negated before tomorrow, as he’s going back down.  Odd move, as it effectively jettisons Derek Lowe.   I’ll have more to say about that in the actual transaction.

I know from my traffic logs, I don’t have a ton of high level traffic, and that’s OK.  I used to care about that, I don’t as much anymore.   But still, for those that do follow me, I don’t like getting that far behind.   Sorry about that.  :)

I also realized I never updated my roster page for the start of the season.   Part of that is because I haven’t been to a game this year, and haven’t been able to pick up a media guide, which is what I usually use for that.  I’ll get to that when I get a copy of the media guide.  Anyone who goes to the game be interested in picking me up one and sending it my way?  Let me know.

NOTE: The Rangers needed a starter, so Josh Lindblom was brought up from AAA to do that.   He didn’t do too well in the spring, but he’s had good numbers at AAA so far this year.  4-0, 2.08 ERA in 8 games (7 started) for the Express.  So it was a good choice there.  I am a bit surprised that it cost Derek Lowe his roster spot.  Especially because they had two open spots on the 40 man roster after this move, so they didn’t have to DFA Lowe.  I guess they just wanted to, and this was a timely decision.

NOTES: Well, there’s not much to say about this other than I don’t like it.  Kinsler has been doing better overall this year than the last few.  Mostly (not completely) conquered his capt popup problem.   So I was’t thrilled at this.  From what I can gather, it won’t be a long stay, but you never want to take someone out of a groove.   Still, an appearance by Jurickson Profar will be good.  So long as he doesn’t just sit on the bench.

NOTES: Well, AJ’s return will probably happen.  Don’t see Miller cracking the major league roster when he’s done with rehab.

NOTES: Ogando has been hurt a bunch.   Not liking this.   Given he was delayed in starting his career due to the visa problems, he’s older than he should be based on major league service.  I wonder if this is age breakdown, something that isn’t likely to get better the more years we get into his career.  :(

NOTES: Uh, OK.   Rehab time was up, and there was no spot, so he was technically optioned to AA, but he was already there on rehab.  Gotta love moves like that.  :)

NOTES: AJ was doing quite well this season so far.  Good behind the plate, hitting the ball well, then he couldn’t do either.  Got hurt somewhere along the line, which was annoying, as I was starting to like what he was doing for the team.  Hopefully it’s not a long stay.

That’s all I’m gonna write about this one, other than to say Moreland had another home run – that’s two days in a row now.

After I posted that, I saw this tweet online.  Made me chuckle.  Had to include it.

My man Smokin’ Joe Ortiz had another shutout inning.  Liking this guy a lot!

Mitch Moreland continues to heat up with another home run – his fifth of the season so far.  Liking he seems to be figuring it out.

That’s about all I’m gonna write, as I didn’t see or hear any of this game.   Taking a pass, as I don’t feel like doing an all box score game recap.  :)

Nick Tepesch might be coming back to earth a bit.   As he was the starter, he did the “fly ahead early” ahead of the team to get some sleep.  It didn’t help.  He got knocked around.    Threw four innings, allowed six hits, four walks, and the first six Cubs runs; although one was unearned.   Given we now have Colby Lewis & Martin Perez about to hit rehab assignments, it looks like perhaps Tepesch will lose his spot if he pitches like this again.  Even if he straightens up, he’s likely to lose his spot anyway, as we’d need two slots for the other guys.   Still, I like the kid, and he’s done mostly pretty well this season.  

But the rest of the staff wasn’t that great, either except for my man, Smokin’ Joe Ortiz.  Ortiz was the only guy who didn’t allow any runs.  Kirkman & Derek Lowe did.   Pretty much can write off the game as a tired team, except for Tepesch.

We did score two runs in the ninth to break up the shutout, although one of them was a gift run.  Came on an error.

But..  Scott Feldman.  Ugh.

This is mostly  procedural move, as he’s gone out for rehab assignments.   Felt so bad when he got hurt in the spring, as he was doing quite well.  Hopefully when he returns, he returns at the same level, and not as a “I have to find myself” kind of thing.