An eventful weekend for the Rangers

First, the good part. Derek Holland looked awesome yesterday, the offense woke up (at least a little bit), and the Rangers took two of three from the Angels. It looks like the Rangers are in the Angels’ heads, plus the Texas nine are tied for the lead for the American League Wild Card berth. The Rangers get three against Cleveland this week before coming home to face the Red Sox, and while Cleveland has been playing better, the Indians are a team that the Rangers should beat.

Another good part: No more Vicente Padilla. Yeah, he was talented. He was also a headcase that wasn’t that good this year! He had an ERA of almost 5.00 with his worst K/9 rate as a Ranger and the second highest WHIP in his time in Texas. Frankly, I’d rather have Dustin Nippert. Is the Rangers staff a little bit thinner right now? Yes. If another one of these guys go down, the Rangers are probably going to have to start Doug Mathis or Guillermo Moscoso. But next year, this team will have A LOT of arms. Not to mention the fact that Ben Sheets is still a free agent and could very well help the Rangers significantly next year. Assuming the Rangers sign Sheets, the rotation could be something like this: Sheets/Millwood/Feldman/Holland/Hunter, with backup starters like Harrison, McCarthy, Moscoso, Nippert and Eric Hurley (kind of a forgotten man this year). I think McCarthy is best suited for the bullpen in the long run anyway, but that is a lot of options. And that’s not even factoring in Feliz. With a good winter season and spring training, we could be looking at Feliz in the rotation and Hunter (unfortunately) bumped to that group of backup starters.

Now, (gulp) the bad part. Josh Hamilton. A lot has been made about what happened in Arizona. There are plenty of places where you can read all of the information about Josh’s experience, apology, etc. But there are quite a few things that bug me about this story. Namely, it exists. I’m sure that the Rangers and Josh talked about coming out with the story in January, but I don’t think that would have been the right move. Josh has said that his memory of the night is quite spotty. Does he even remember posing for the pictures that surfaced over the weekend? If the Rangers had come out in January and talked about the incident without any pictures, what would the reaction have been then? Is this story really worthy of all the coverage, or are sports talk people simply searching for something to talk about? It’s a shame that Derek Holland hasn’t gotten more press and airtime for his performance yesterday and what more starts like that would mean for this team down the stretch.

But, alas, this world focused on Josh Hamilton is the world we live in today. The world where sports coverage doesn’t really have that much to do with sports. Ranger fans can’t be pumped to listen to the radio to hear about Derek Holland – they have to listen to more talk about Josh. Which, in the end, probably won’t affect the team too much, unless this story impacts Josh’s play. It didn’t on Saturday. If Josh stays hot for the next week or two? It will probably fade away. If he can’t get the average above .240, Josh is going to be dogged about this for the rest of the year.

Let’s hope, for the team’s sake, that it doesn’t come to that.

Photo edited by Matt Lawrence