Back to 2 games under .500, after last night's come from behind, blow the lead then come back again victory.
The game story in the DMN focuses on the Ramon Vazquez mojo...the Rangers are 56-46 when he starts for them. Today is also the one year anniversary of the last time (before yesterday) the Rangers got a walk-off homer, with Nelson Cruz doing the honors that time.
David Murphy was supposed to get a day off yesterday, but ended up coming in late in the game for defensive purposes. His numbers have dropped with his recent slump, and he's been terrible against lefties this year (something that plagued him in the minors, as well), so it probably makes sense to sit him against lefties. The problem is, with Milton Bradley unable to play the outfield regularly, if Murphy doesn't play the outfield, your other options are limited.
And Bradley hurt himself on a practice swing yesterday, necessitating lifting him from the game, so Marlon Byrd may end up getting activated today, although the Rangers wanted him to get a couple of more games in Oklahoma.
Anthony Andro writes about the catching situation, saying that neither Gerald Laird nor Jarrod Saltalamacchia are happy about the current arrangement.
Kevin Sherrington says the Rangers blew their opportunity to fire Ron Washington, by not doing it when the team was going poorly, and also seems to imply that Jon Daniels might follow Washington out the door when Washington finally does get axed. And we have this real interesting quote:
If the Rangers, indeed, wanted to fire Washington – and at least two members of the top brass wanted it – they missed their window.
Given that Sherrington says elsewhere that Daniels is standing behind Washington, I assume the two people he's talking about are Tom Hicks and Nolan Ryan. And when you combine this with Hicks dropping Daniels in the grease on the Babe Laufenberg show this past weekend, saying that the Chris Young trade wouldn't have been made if Nolan Ryan had been here, I get the feeling that Ryan is the one with the clout in this organization right now, the guy Hicks is going to lean on.