I don't have much time for a post because of work, but a few thoughts on the past week.

After failing to support Lewis in his first start, the Rangers then won the next five straight, including Lewis's second start.  Colby was solid enough in his first game and looked even better in his second.  Lewis allowed only one run before coming out of the game in the sixth inning and has yet to walk a batter.  He only allowed six hits, but none of them were cheap, and a lot of the outs he recorded were nail-biters.

The Rangers looked like they were finally getting everything together this past week, which makes sense considering Texas' spring training was a mockery of team assembly.  Everyone had a good week, or at least some good moments, even Prince Fielder, Josh Wilson and Donnie Murphy.  People are starting to scream about Fielder not hitting; after all, Texas isn't paying him to *just* get on base.  Which is arguable but also philosophical, so we'll leave that alone for now.  Fielder hit two home runs this past week, along with a few more hits and got on base almost every other at bat.  Despite which, a fan's visual perception was most likely of Fielder grounding out several times, or hitting line drives straight into the shift.  However, some notes of promise for those who are really worried about the Rangers' investment:  Fielder, for more than ten days now, is hitting the ball HARD almost every time.  He's just not beating the shift.  I suspect he will at some point though, because Prince has shown with most of his hits that he can change the direction of the ball significantly and quickly; he just doesn't have his timing down quite right.  His last home run was in on his hands.  He literally just flicked the bat and dented a fan deep in the home run porch.  An amazing home run, but amazing batsmanship is more significant.  Also, Fielder's walk rate this year is currently the second highest of his career, off the high mark by less than a percentile.  His K rate is the lowest of his career.  His eyes are good, his defense is OK, and his baserunning has been acceptable (all of the Rangers had some serious baserunning gaffs in the first week).  Fielder will come around, and if this last week is any indication, when he does he's going to be a terror.

Kouzmanoff, Andrus and Leonys Martin have been carrying the offense, and Andrus is up to nine stolen bases on the year last I checked.  And let's not forget that almost half the time, Choo is on base.  His slash line is currently .313/.429/.463; Choo is currently on track to beat his numbers from last year by a slight margin.

And then there's J.P. Arencibia.  The Arencibia signing was meant to show that J.P.  could actually be a good catcher and contribute offensively.  Instead, it seems to be proving that J.P. Arencibia is a poor game-caller, a mediocre defensive catcher, and a failure behind the plate.  It is possible that it's only a coincidence that Arencibia has caught the worst-pitched games this year, especially considering he was used almost exclusively for the first week, but it does seem a bit weird that every time he catches, the ERAs go up.  Except for Darvish.  Darvish pitched better to Arencibia than Chirinos, if you want to count two runs in eight innings as bad.  Of course, as I've documented before, Darvish is wound pretty tight.  Even though his tremendous talent and accumulating big-league experience has helped him master his game to a greater extent than ever before, we know he can go out of balance easily with the right stimuli.  Maybe Arencibia sticks as Darvish's personal pitcher, as Soto has for the past two years.

As for that last game against the White Sox, well; did you watch it?  That was a weird game, man.  I'm not saying it was aliens, but having the Easter bunny in the stands couldn't have been a good thing.

Posted by: Ben at 09:24 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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