There was a point when Ranger fans were very disgruntled with McCarthy and the trade (some still are, even though most of us know it's way too early).  Because of that, columnists and fans today keep saying "McCarthy is starting to turn it around."  I think if we look at the entire season, then we will see that he's not turning it around, because he's had more good starts than bad.  His peripherals could definitely improve, but he hasn't been horrible.

Here are his starts in order:

April 4th - He pitches 6 innings and allows 3 runs for his first quality start of the season.  Despite the quality start he actually gets the loss in this one as the Rangers fall 5-3.

April 9th - He pitches 6 innings again and allow 2 runs for another quality start.

April 15th - Things get ugly and he allows 6 runs in two innings.  Over the next two weeks, McCarthy (when starting) will pitch a total of 6 innings and allow 17 runs.  That's scary it's so bad, but according to all reports something was wrong with his motion that was corrected later on.

April 20th - Things get even uglier and he allows 6 runs in one inning.  The media and fans start talking about his hurried motion and potential soreness in his throwing arm as the cause of the problems.

April 25th - While trying to get the mental and physical problems worked out, McCarthy comes in to relieve Padilla and fires two shutout innings.

April 29th - Back in the starting role, McCarthy allows five runs in three innings.  Still very ugly, but an improvement over his previous two starts.  At this point, McCarthy is 1-4 with a 9.90 ERA.  He's had two good starts, a good relief appearance and three horrendous starts.

May 4th - McCarthy seems to have things figured out as he pitches 6 innings and allows 1 run.  At the time, Toronto was one of the better hitting teams in the league, and he had just allowed five runs in three innings against them five days earlier.  This was surely significant mentally.  He notches his third quality start of the season, and gets the win.

May 10th - For the first time all season, McCarthy is allowed to break the 100 pitch barrier in a game.  Unfortunately he does so in only 5.1 innings.  It was against the Yankees though, and he only allowed one run.  That gives him another win to bring him to 3-4.

May 15th -Against those dreaded Devil Rays, he goes 6 innings (breaking 100 pitches again), gets 7 Ks and allows three runs.  That gives him a fourth quality start, but not the win as the Rangers lose 4-3.

May 20th - McCarthy pitches 6 innings, allows 1 run for his fifth quality start of the season.  He actually now leads the Rangers in quality starts with five (Tejeda has four).

So now McCarthy stands at 4-4 with an ERA of 5.82.  One of those losses was in a game that he went six and allowed 3, and if you remove the one start where he allowed six runs in 1 inning, then his ERA drops to 4.69 and we're talking about how great a season he's having.  Even with that travesty, the guy now has three very bad starts out of ten appearances.  Those three bad starts were terrible, but they don't appear to be the norm by any means, and I don't think we should be talking about him "turning a corner" since for most of the season he's been fine.  In all reality, he's probably the Ranger's second best starter for the season behind Tejeda.