Is it time for the Rangers to panic? | Baseball Bar-B-Cast
Yahoo Sports MLB analysts Jordan Shusterman and Jake Mintz discuss how the defending World Series champs have performed this season and if they can turn it around this summer. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
The Rangers have also done that to some degree by spending a lot of money on baseball players and of course, reaping the rewards by winning a World Series last year, they are not doing so hot.
They are now 24 and 27.
They're still in second place, but I wrote a little bit about them uh earlier this week just about the notion of how different this is from last season.
Not just because we know of course they go on to win the World Series, but last year May is when the Rangers were on fire, like this is when it was like, oh my God, like this team is really good.
They went 18 and nine.
Their offense was if not the best in, in baseball, one of, you know, two or three best.
And now despite a very similar cast of characters, I know there's some guys missing due to injury like, like Josh Young, but this offense is just knock on going and the pitching, particularly the bullpen, even though, you know, they bring in Kirby Yates and David Robertson who have both been exactly what you could have hoped, everything beyond them.
Has been a mess there.
Leclerc has not been good.
Josh Spors is injured, of course, the World Series he from last year and they are just going to ha unfortunately, you know, they're not falling in that big of a hole because their division is not very good apparently.
But like, it's good, they're gonna have to get better as the season goes on instead of what happened last year where they kind of built enough of a lead where they could kind of not coast but clearly they lost the division at the end of the season and then they got to go on this run in October.
I just am really interested to see how aggressive they are in addressing these moves at these, these roster holes of the deadline or if we really are just waiting for them to get healthy on the mound, if we are just waiting for them to get healthy on offense and for those guys to find their stride, because I thought that this lineup was gonna be even better with guys like Carter with guys like Langford.
I know he's hurt and it's just, it's just kind of stagnant right now.
It's just not quite, not quite there.
Seeger is starting to find it, but it's, it's just, uh, they're just not great right now.
I'm not trying to be patronizing and I understand that I'm oversimplifying here.
Ok?
I get that, but I'm just gonna tell everyone a little secret.
Ok. Ready.
If you're waiting for Jacob deGrom to get healthy.
If that is vital to your uh your roster construction, you're gonna keep waiting.
That's, well, that's, that was my other big point is that we can point to the entire rotation that is sitting on the A L in deGrom and Scherzer and ma I know Dunning just came back.
Eovaldi is also hurt, right?
But the returns of all those guys is completely unclear, right?
So you can't just be like, oh, we're gonna have the best rotation of baseball in August.
There's no worries like, OK, the odds of all five of those guys being in the rotation at the same time this season are very low.
And so if we're, if you're just counting on that, II I don't think you can.
So I hope we see some of those guys in the second half.
But that's, that would be my concern with the Rangers.
Now again, they're not the only team, but seriously, but that's, that's just kind of where I'm at with this Texas team that clearly, while, you know, defending your title is hard and they were a flawed team last year.
They, they, they are going to have to have something.
I I'm waiting for them to give me something to a reason to remember why they were clearly contenders coming into the season.