Yet I wonder. Not superstitious, much, but has it popped into anyone’s mind that both Detroit and SFO wear black and orange? Yeah, the colors of Hallowe’en. Kryptonite to the Rangers. Hitters go blind at the sight of it. Pitchers have unexplainable things happen. Their crowds cheer our players at times. The weather cools and the humidity rises when they are engaged. The moon and stars don’t shine, they just sorta hang there. Guests in the TV booth are about funny things that happened to them in the past. Birds come onto the field in late innings. Opposing home runs nick the wall or slip into the first row of seats. Odd plays happen at the plate. Umpires lose the bottom of the strike zone. It’s black and oraange, I tell ya ! Heh – coincidence?

And the flip side of that here lately is that Rudy should be fired for not turning all of these guys into Barry Bonds c. 2002. That list of names does not contain one guy that you should objectively look at and think “oh yeah, big-time on base guy”. Rudy is not the problem and he’s not going to be the solution, either. He’s a very good hitting coach, but that’s all he is. Just like Maddux is a good pitching coach, but without the vastly improved defense would we be talking so highly of him here?

they still wouldn’t be a top offense, but they’d be winning some games.

Right now, only 3 players have OBPs over 300 (Young Andrus, and Murphy) for June, and 300 OBP sucks pretty major ass.

He spent a lot of time on the DL as a Red, but he was still hitting great when playing.

in a train derailment sort of way.

he really was, when he gets consistent with that curve he showed last night, he’s gonna be very good. His slider hasnt been good from what i’ve seen, he leaves it up way too much at least, but that Curve looked really good. maybe mix a few CU in there and he’ll be fine

He is completely lost, and his suck is contagious.

I remember a story describing how Rudy wants the hitters to wait until the pitcher releases the ball to start their swing. Another story where Rudy said it’s all mental with CD, implying CD has to get used to waiting to start his swing.

If nothing has changed from Rudy’s perspective, I don’t see how sending Davis down does any good. Either Davis just doesn’t have the physical ability to wait that long to start his swing (doubt it is bat speed, but there could be other factors like eye sight), or he really just need to learn to trust his swing at the ML level. There has never been a period, until now, that he really hasn’t been able to hit balls in the zone. It was mostly a matter of not chasing bad pitches in the minors. And, last year when he came up, his contact % on balls in the strike zone was 79%. That has dropped to 63%. He’s seeing more fastballs, but only 5% more than last year (55% last compared to 60% this). It isn’t as if he’s just getting fastballs because folks believe his bat speed isn’t there.

I’m tempted to blame Rudy for fixin’ somethin’ that wasn’t broke.

In which case, CD may need to get away from Rudy for a while to get back to himself. Or, maybe he needs to be traded if Rudy is just a really bad fit for CD.

2.2 UZR, 5.4 UZR/150 ~ above average, but not nearly what it was when folks (including me) were justifying keeping him up here because his glove made waiting for his bat worthwhile.

-0.5 WAR. Good God, y’all.

I’m not real keen on that idea. Not that I wouldn’t mind seeing more of him in the lineup, but first basemen under 6 feet all worry me.

I kind of like your ideas, but I really don’t see them cutting Jones and doing that. More likely you’d see Blalock and Jones at 1B if (when) they send Davis down. I also don’t see them trading Byrd unless the return is both of appropriate value and a help to the major league club. Too much perceived value in the clubhouse, leadership and all that.

I am wont to poo poo all the clubhouse chemistry stuff by nature, but most of the time I think this front office and Wash do a pretty good job of mixing a little of that consideration in there along with more objective, tangible stuff. Cutting Jones wouldn’t be a problem, though I fear they’ll hang onto him even if his production continues to slacken. But trading Byrd needs to be done carefully with a good return and very carefully worded press conferences.

put Borbon in CF platooning with Byrd against LH, Hammy in LF when he gets back and DH sometimes as well, Nellie in RF, with Blalock/AJ splitting 1B, Murphy playing DH and LF against all righties and then having Hank and AJ take the DH/1b slots against all LHP. So Murph goes back to being a platoon player.

just my two cents, I think Borbon could be an effective player today in the bigs, might as well try something to break this team out of the slump

I dug around for more info. Nevermind

that this little joke is getting very old?

Hot Topic.

Pretty cool looking. Too bad he can’t hit.

Colorado fired Clint Hurdle and then went on a run. What do you advocate the Rangers doing?

We had a discussion about Cain regression, IIRC.

if the Rangers throw in Elvis and a prospect.