With Eovaldi being a former A&M commit I choose to believe he will someday be our pitching coach before coaching in the bigs

I don't want to get in front of my skis, but this team is starting have that feel of being something special. It's certainly an encouraging start. I do believe we're a few pieces away, but hopefully we can find a bullpen arm or two - problem being, something like 26 of the 30 MLB teams are looking for bullpen help. We'll probably have to overpay to get somebody.

Still, extremely encouraged so far and watching Rangers baseball is fun again.

Bullpen help is needed, but not something RIGHT NOW because you'd have to way overpay for it, and a lot teams just don't make those moves this early in the season.

We'll see teams get weeded out closer to the deadline, and that'll be the time to make the move. Just have to winning games and hold off the rest of the division. I think four teams from the AL West will be buyers at the deadline.

Per AJM

• The Rangers took two of three, in Seattle, against the Mariners' three best starting pitchers, with their 4-5-6 starters. Texas only scored six runs in the series, and still won two games. That's a hell of an outcome.
• The offense did better than one would expect for just four runs scoring. No walks, but 13 hits, including three doubles and a sixth inning Marcus Semien home run. Semien, Adolis Garcia, Leody Taveras and Josh Smith all had two hit games. Every starter had a hit. That's pretty impressive.
  

so in Anaheim, the offense went in their guns blazing and turned the 2 games we win into massive blow outs where Anaheim threw a position player as pitcher.

In Seattle, we won with good pitching, I won't say good defense because of the Josh smith drop at the wall in left field which hurt and the weird play in the first inning yesterday. For most of the series, the mariners did a good job of preventing us from getting hits with runners on base. That's why they were able to keep it so close while having a massive advantage in the pitching matchups.

Hopefully every game in Oakland we can put up 5+ runs per game and force the A's to try and keep up.

rbtexan said:

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I don't want to get in front of my skis, but this team is starting have that feel of being something special. It's certainly an encouraging start. I do believe we're a few pieces away, but hopefully we can find a bullpen arm or two - problem being, something like 26 of the 30 MLB teams are looking for bullpen help. We'll probably have to overpay to get somebody.

Still, extremely encouraged so far and watching Rangers baseball is fun again.

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There are a bunch of bad teams who will become sellers in July. We had to rely on what we've got and minor league call ups until then. It will be nice to get Seager back soon.

This team is unbelievably deep so far tho. The Seager injury showed us how good Duran is not only at hitting, but he's probably a better fielder than Seager at short stop too. Degrom suffered an injury and Dunning has filled the hole. Dunning should've won in Anaheim, but smith had a bad day. Jankowski goes down and now Josh smith is playing pretty well.

I remember a recent trade deadline where the Yankees made a lot of moves to improve their team and they accomplished the goal of keeping their best 10 prospects or so. I'm hoping the rangers can do something similar where they can move guys who are more lotto type prospects than probable major league players like foscue or Porter / rocker / leiter.

Baseball america had the rangers taking college outfielder Wyatt Langford with the 4th overall pick in their most recent mock draft.

I really want one of those 3 college bats. Just need 1 of the teams ahead of us to take a pitcher or a high school kid.

Looking at Oakland's stats is interesting. They're a pretty average offensive team. That is not their issue. The issue is that their pitching has been very bad... like historically bad. I went back and looked at team pitching stats for every team since 2000 and couldn't find a team with worse stats than Oakland currently has.

Hopefully our offense can take advantage this series. In the last series against Oakland, we had one phenomenal offensive performance (18 runs) and two meh offensive performances (4 and 5 runs).

To continue some of the conversation above, I also think this team is shaping up to be pretty great and the makings of a very good season. The lineup is flat out elite. I had my worries about the bottom of the lineup coming into the season, but Heim being arguably the best catcher in baseball behind Murphy, Duran being a guy guy, and Leody just giving us enough has made this lineup the second best in baseball (without Corey freaking Seager). The starting pitching has done nothing but impress me with the way they grind and fight. The bullpen clearly needs help and it will come, but wow has Josh Sborz been a revelation.

We're going to experience some turbulence sooner or later, but I trust this team and the coaching staff to get us through it. The only areas that I want to see some improvement are the amount of swing and miss in the middle of the lineup and pitching help any way you can get it. Let's go out and continue to mash against average pitching!

This makes it that much important that we take 3 out of 4. We scored 6 runs in the last 3 games games when we were averaging a little over 6 runs a game for the season. We have to take advantage of that terrible pitching and I think we will since last series we under performed in runs scored.

Rangers roster moves for Thursday:
-LHP John King recalled from Round Rock (AAA)
-RHP Ian Kennedy designated for assignment
-SS Corey Seager sent to Frisco (AA) on injury rehabilitation assignment

— Texas Rangers PR (@TXRangersPR) May 11, 2023

CY heard us

I am taking my boys to the Rough Riders game tomorrow night (weather permitting)!

TexAg1822 said:

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Rangers roster moves for Thursday:
-LHP John King recalled from Round Rock (AAA)
-RHP Ian Kennedy designated for assignment
-SS Corey Seager sent to Frisco (AA) on injury rehabilitation assignment

— Texas Rangers PR (@TXRangersPR) May 11, 2023

CY heard us

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I don't know. I remember King being pretty terrible. It probably should've been Barlow. Hope I'm wrong tho.

Carlos Collazo of Baseball America writes:

At this stage in the calendar, there seems to be a consensus group of five players leading the 2023 class, and a huge mess of split-camp and polarizing players that could fall into many different landing spots depending on late-season performance and organizational philosophy.

If you don't have access to Dylan Crews, Paul Skenes, Walker Jenkins, Wyatt Langford, or Max Clarkgood luck!

I'm glad we have a top 5 pick. Don't "Dillion Tate" the draft CY!

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/05/athletics-to-select-zach-neal.html

Starting against us tonight.

I feel like this will go two ways, he's either gonna carry a no hitter into the late innings or he's gone by the 4th lol

Tonight is a great night to put a 1/2 game between us and LAA and HOU.

The rest of the division will be playing the zombie AL Central this weekend. It goes without saying but, we need to do everything possible to keep winning and outpace everyone as much as possible.

Hopefully we see a Sborz like revelation with King. He's had a good year in round rock with 2.08 era.

From Scott Lucas:

Texas has designated RHP Ian Kennedy for assignment and called up LHP John King. Kennedy has a 7.20 ERA but generally hasn't been that bad, holding opponents to a .268/.326/.415 line. Specifically, however, 10 of his 15 runners allowed have scored, and he appeared prominently in dismal losses to Houston and Cincinnati. I haven't mentioned King much this season because you've seen him and he is who he is. King has been okay in Round Rock: .286/.333/.343 opposing line, good control, not many strikeouts. On the downside, no Express pitcher has allowed a greater rate of balls hit 95+ MPH than his 51%. He also has an outstanding 64% grounder rate, so most of that hard contact results in groundouts or singles.

Fuzzy Dunlop said:

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Tonight is a great night to put a 1/2 game between us and LAA and HOU.

The rest of the division will be playing the zombie AL Central this weekend. It goes without saying but, we need to do everything possible to keep winning and outpace everyone as much as possible.

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And Seattle.

Win tonight and you gain on the whole division. Would be nice.

AL central might be the weakest division out there. Either that or NL central. AL east is a beast like always. For reference, we are 4-3 against the AL east so far I think.

Hate that those west coast games start so late.

Ken Giles will be throwing a bullpen for teams tomorrow, per reports. I hope the rangers are there.

Water Boy said:

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Hate that those west coast games start so late.

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Not as bad as it used to be. I'm a big fan of the 13 game division format over the 19 one.

Hey, this Seager guy is pretty good!

B3 | FRI 2, WCH 0 #LetsRide pic.twitter.com/5t7FBOJJsV

— Frisco RoughRiders (@RidersBaseball) May 12, 2023

DeangeloVickers said:

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Hey, this Seager guy is pretty good!

B3 | FRI 2, WCH 0 #LetsRide pic.twitter.com/5t7FBOJJsV

— Frisco RoughRiders (@RidersBaseball) May 12, 2023

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Can't wait to have his bat back in the lineup.

Isn't it crazy that Duran is actually better at fielding shortstop than Seager? Might need to move Seager in the future to another position.

Seager has always been a pretty average shortstop. Even when he was 24 and 25, he's never been a glove guy.

Players families in attendance for Oak and that's about it

Let's hope for a stress free ball game and we see Oakland throw out a position player in the 8th inning!

Grapesoda2525 said:

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https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/05/athletics-to-select-zach-neal.html

Starting against us tonight.

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Luis Medina with the start tonight rather than Zach Neal. Maybe Neal didn't make it in time?

In other news in your link, Mason Miller to the IL with forearm tightness. I hate to hear that for anyone.

Should get at least 5 tonight

Potent offense going up against a AAA call up that can't throw strikes.

And then you remember it's @Oakland so naturally the guy has thrown 3 perfect with 28 pitches.

Time to shell him the second time through.

It's LeClerc