Strength of schedule has leveled out quite a bit.

Astros are 21st with a remaining SOS of .495

Rangers are 22nd with a remaining SOS of .494

After today it will be even more in our favor when we play our last game against the dodgers and Astros play another game against the A's.

Rangers starting lineup for July 23 vs. Los Angeles-NL. pic.twitter.com/5ORqXIdY0z

— Texas Rangers PR (@TXRangersPR) July 23, 2023

I LOVE this lineup.

Perez @ home.

Opportunity and auditions for everyone.

This game will be memorable and the line in the sand to say, "WE ARE GOING TO WIN!"

throwup emoji

What is the status on Garcia? Day to day and just taking a day off?

KT 90 said:

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What is the status on Garcia? Day to day and just taking a day off?

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I posted this last night. Haven't heard anything today.

Quote:

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Quote:

3 hours agoX-rays came back clean on Garcia's right hand after he was hit by a pitch Saturday, Kennedi Landry of MLB.com reports.

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Wonder what the deal is with Owen White? Bumped from his start last night and everyone assumed he'd be called up today but crickets. Is there a trade being negotiated with him as the center piece?

***edit*** just kidding White was just called up and Otto optioned

He did get called up today

Otto should join Howard as to never see the field for the Rangers again.

DallasAg 94 said:

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I LOVE this lineup.

Perez @ home.

Opportunity and auditions for everyone.

This game will be memorable and the line in the sand to say, "WE ARE GOING TO WIN!"

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Wait... DallasAg94 does sarcasm? That puts the whole body of work into a whole other perspective.

Eovaldi skipping his start against Houston. Oof

His velo was WAY down in his last start. I wouldn't be surprised if he's got some dead-arm or fatigue going.

The Tampa sweep was 3 days ago and feels like 2 weeks ago

Dwb22 said:

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Eovaldi skipping his start against Houston. Oof

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Where are you seeing this?

The Rangers will skip Nathan Eovaldi against Houston. The velo was down in last outing, despite success. But Bochy said the club had planned for some occasions to skip pitchers this season.

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) July 23, 2023

Jesus Christ. Helluva time to pick a skip start.

beagle2009 said:

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The Rangers will skip Nathan Eovaldi against Houston. The velo was down in last outing, despite success. But Bochy said the club had planned for some occasions to skip pitchers this season.

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) July 23, 2023

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I think the urgency meter to pick up more pitching just ticked up another notch.

agent-maroon said:

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DallasAg 94 said:

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I LOVE this lineup.

Perez @ home.

Opportunity and auditions for everyone.

This game will be memorable and the line in the sand to say, "WE ARE GOING TO WIN!"

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Wait... DallasAg94 does sarcasm? That puts the whole body of work into a whole other perspective.

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The word you are looking for is "tongue-in-cheek."

Yeah, I know it is 3 words... that's part of the oft misunderstood humor.

I like the lineup.. both seriously... and ironically tongue-in-cheek.

Most people were wanting to see more of Brad Miller.

I said the other day, it is audition time. Let's see what we have. If we are going to get swept, the Dodgers are as good as any to lose to. Let's see if Speas has the ability to step-up. At a minimum, he gets a chance to have that heart rate full throttle and get the pressure of getting lit up. How he responds is more critical to his development.

Rangers had a chance to match up well and sweep the Dodgers. It didn't happen.

In a sport where you can make millions with an 80% failure (.200 BA), you can't take yourself any more serious than a meteorologist.

Unfortunately with the Seager and Garcia injuries looming we are in a spot where you need a TORP and a bullpen arm to be a title contender but also may need at least a #3-4 type guy just to hold onto the division.

Eovaldi is being labeled as "planned rest", but that's unlikely. You don't go from a manager willing to punt a Sunday ****game to "have everyone rested for a big upcoming series" to sitting your best (and arguably only reliable) starter in late July against the team on your heels in the division.

We really need Perez to shove today and just survive the next week or two with a lead still in-tact.

Looking at the Houston matchup that was there for Eovaldi, it appears Houston could have a BP day. If that is Houston's plan, pitching Eovaldi could be great matchup. OTOH, it could be a chance for you to bump Eovaldi and rest him.

I say take the W if Eovaldi is capable. But resting Eovaldi is in line with my comments on slowing Ohtani's pace by moving him to the BP and/or being just a "Starter" for 2-3 IP so he can still DH. Have him "Starting" ahead of Heaney or Perez.

The problem with any other role in the BP for Ohtani would prevent him from getting warm up pitches.

ETA... and yes, Eovaldi having something more serious is a concern. If he is announced as being bumped because of an injury... or if he ALSO gets lit up, it diminishes your bargaining at the deadline with teams knowing you are more desperate than you'd want them to know.

Agreed. This was seeing Eovaldi's last few starts and maybe a bullpen of the same type of velocities, and saying "we have an issue here." I think we have ridden him like a thoroughbred and he's going through fatigue/dead arm, which is less than ideal.

Revised expectation:

Make ass kicking from dodgers today as painless as possible, win 1 game in Houston, and hope we can win the series in San Diego while we get some guys back

DallasAg 94 said:

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Looking at the Houston matchup that was there for Eovaldi, it appears Houston could have a BP day. If that is Houston's plan, pitching Eovaldi could be great matchup. OTOH, it could be a chance for you to bump Eovaldi and rest him.

I say take the W if Eovaldi is capable. But resting Eovaldi is in line with my comments on slowing Ohtani's pace by moving him to the BP and/or being just a "Starter" for 2-3 IP so he can still DH. Have him "Starting" ahead of Heaney or Perez.

The problem with any other role in the BP for Ohtani would prevent him from getting warm up pitches.

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We have a 3 game lead, not a 13 game lead. Resting guys for the playoff stretch is a quick way to find yourself playing in a 3-game wildcard series.

And you don't make a massive trade for Ohtani and then shift him to a reduced role. That makes zero sense.

For whatever reason this year you've zoned in on IP being an indicator of performance rather than years of past performance and actual metrics. It's actually quite impressive how bad you can be at applying statistics

Tksymm7 said:

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Agreed. This was seeing Eovaldi's last few starts and maybe a bullpen of the same type of velocities, and saying "we have an issue here." I think we have ridden him like a thoroughbred and he's going through fatigue/dead arm, which is less than ideal.

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Whole lot of issues coming at once. I think the reality that many of us knew is that we were significantly over-playing our talent level on both offense and SP the first 3 months of the season.

Which is fine, those games count the same as the last 3 months... but when players start regressing back towards a realistic level AND you have a few key injuries, things start to get rocky.

I think you see what you get the next 7 days and that guides your approach. If you can steal one today from LAD, take 2 of 3 in Houston and 2 of 3 in SD with the roster as it currently is, you keep Ohtani as an option as you can make a case this team is a legitimate World Series contender.

If we go 3-4 or worse over the next 7, then you pass on unloading the farm for a rental and instead look at some cheaper options and/or guys that are under contract for another season. Get a solid mid-range starter and bullpen arm to get you to the playoffs -- it's not the time to go all-in.

Proposition Joe said:

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Tksymm7 said:

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Agreed. This was seeing Eovaldi's last few starts and maybe a bullpen of the same type of velocities, and saying "we have an issue here." I think we have ridden him like a thoroughbred and he's going through fatigue/dead arm, which is less than ideal.

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Whole lot of issues coming at once. I think the reality that many of us knew is that we were significantly over-playing our talent level on both offense and SP the first 3 months of the season.

Which is fine, those games count the same as the last 3 months... but when players start regressing back towards a realistic level AND you have a few key injuries, things start to get rocky.

I think you see what you get the next 7 days and that guides your approach. If you can steal one today from LAD, take 2 of 3 in Houston and 2 of 3 in SD with the roster as it currently is, you keep Ohtani as an option as you can make a case this team is a legitimate World Series contender.

If we go 3-4 or worse over the next 7, then you pass on unloading the farm for a rental and instead look at some cheaper options and/or guys that are under contract for another season. Get a solid mid-range starter and bullpen arm to get you to the playoffs -- it's not the time to go all-in.

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Agree with this.

Getting Ohtani addresses some of the Rangers problems (a big bat & a MOR SP), but it doesn't at all address the single biggest problem with the Rangers - the bullpen. Ohtani is a really good SP, but unless he throws about 12 complete games in the back half of the season, he could in theory be a .500 pitcher because of bullpen blowups. I also don't personally think his bat can make up for the pitching woes - if it could, why didn't it do so for the Angels (rhetorical question).

The next handful or so games will go a long way towards determining what the Rangers do at the deadline IMO.

Tksymm7 said:

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We're in a very weird spot right now. On one hand, we absolutely need more pitching. Not a want but a need now. On the other hand, is one starter and one reliever really going to help? Especially if the starter is more of a #2-3 type of guy. Don't get me wrong, I still think we absolutely need a guy like that, but I just question how much getting someone like that is really going to help. I lean towards us needing a 1A or 1B type of guy to make a significant impact, and I don't know if that is out there right now or if an inflated price at the deadline is something worth doing.

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I agree. We could certainly use another bullpen arm or two, but as for starting pitching I'm not sure getting at #2 or #3 guy really elevates us.

Just go get Ohtani. Problem solved.

IP has been relevant to me and something I've posted about on here for over 20 years.

After I graduated from A&M, I started following the Rangers minor league teams more closely because I had more free time. The job I had at the time required me to be at my computer for 8hrs, but my work only took about 2-3hrs a day. It was right as TexAgs and its pre-cursures took off.

I realized at the start of Minor League seasons, the Rangers would have a ton of SP. They'd go 2 IP/G for about a month and have like 10+ SPs that would rotate. About a month in, they'd think the numbers and increase to 3IP/G and a month later again to 4IP/G.

My application of IPs and the relevancy is supported by decades of teams and pitching coaches. So, whether you believe IP is relevant or not is inconsequential to me.

I do believe the Ranges had Eovaldi targeted to be skipped, whether they felt forced to do it quicker than they wanted is up for debate and meaningless to me.

If you doubt my application, then all you need to do is review Mike Maddux and how he handled the Rangers SP during the WS runs a decade ago. But, he probably doesn't have the type of advanced metric understanding as you do.

I don't believe the next few games will set any kind of standard for what the front office plans to do at the deadline. Maybe if they haven't been in first place all year or were a few games above .500 but they literally own the best run differential in baseball and are 17 games above .500. The ownership and GM have stated they are committed towards getting a championship in Arlington. Getting a rental in Chapman wasn't done for nothing. The ownership and GM believe in this team. It's time for a few of you to start doing so as well. Sick of the posters that come on here beating their chest every time they go through a rough patch about how we should tamper expectations and how we're going to regress. This has been said since Seager was hurt the first time. Hell, just 2 days ago they finished a sweep of what had been the best team in the AL. Get a W today and they just went 4-2 vs 2 of the best teams on baseball.

I think out lineup, at least with Corey Seager, is still very good and one of the best in the league even if we lack a real OBP/no strikeouts type of guy, but you're spot on with the pitching. I think we all probably knew guys were overperforming, but didn't necessarily know how much they were overperforming. Leody and Dunning are good examples on both fronts, where we all knew they weren't going to put up all-star types of numbers for the entire season, but also didn't necessarily know where they would land or will still land.