All of a sudden, the Rangers are closer to the Rays (who are behind them) in the Wild Card race than they are to the BoSox.
The Rangers were one strike away from getting out of an inning without the Rays scoring on four different occasions which ended up the Rays getting a run across.
Evan Grant has some notes up, with the most striking being the news that the Rangers are looking to try to get Chris Davis up prior to September 1, and that when he does come up, he's going to be the first baseman. One of the things that has been frustrating about the team riding things out with Hank Blalock at first base, given that he's been terrible this season, while Davis has apparently made the mechanical adjustments he needed to make at AAA and has been raking, is that the justification largely has been, the team is winning and you don't want to change things when the team is winning.
Of course, the team has been winning while getting zero out of the first base position, and the offense has been a season-long concern. Basically, the Rangers' position appears to be that they aren't going to address an obvious weakness which has an in-house solution until they start falling out of the race...when one of the reasons they are falling out of the race is the lack of production from the first base spot. Frustrating.
Anthony Andro's notes have Ron Washington saying that, when Davis returns, Blalock will return to his old pre-Davis-demotion role with the team, DHing some and playing some first base. There's also some quotes from Andruw Jones about how frustrated he is with his current struggles.
Our man z has some questions up at the DMN blog.
And David Murphy thinks a few days off will help him break out of his recent slump.