Friday Morning Links

It doesn't seem like a playoff contender has their wins described as "wacky." "Workmanlike," "implacable," those are the staid labels of inevitability. Wacky is how you describe a team that wins despite themselves. Anthony Andro calls yesterday's win "wacky."

Adam said his thoughts upon watching the final play of yesterday's game were "oh, God, they're going to tie and I'm going to have to sit in this suffocating heat for another 3 or 4 innings... oh, thank God." Drew Davison describes the play in his postgame story, but somehow doesn't capture the Bataan Death March vibe I got from Adam.

T.R. Sullivan triumphantly heralds the Rangers' crawling back to within a game of first, choosing to highlight the many things that went wrong yesterday but still somehow didn't result in a loss.

Todd Wills has his rapid reactions to yesterday's win, a whole post on the joy of the final play at the plate, and says that in taking the series the Rangers showed that they can match the A's in "mental toughness..." and by mental toughness I guess he means "managing to win despite several mistakes and misplays."

Martin Perez is expected to start Saturday's game and Josh Lindblom is being optioned back to Round Rock, and with Mitch Moreland being activated Friday either Robinson Chirinos or Joseph Ortiz will likely be sent back, as well.

Randy Galloway has had a taste of Jurickson Profar and would like to render a verdict: "weak sauce."

Drew Davison's notes column Martin Perez's triumphant return, the team's return to St. Louis, and Nelson Cruz getting a second game in the three-hole.

T.R. Sullivan's notes column discusses painful memories of St. Louis, Perez returning to the rotation on Saturday, and a Elvis Andrus recognizing that he's having a bad offensive season because apparently he doesn't live in a fantasy land.

Gerry Fraley trolls Rangerland by waving a little 2011 at us.

Craig Gentry can take his lunchpail and hardhat and cheer Leonys from the bench.

Jim Bowden has some trade proposals for the Rangers that make a lot of sense provided you hate the Rangers and want nothing but bad things for them.

Finally, I posted a link about the mysterious deaths of a Russian ski hiking expedition the other day, so here's another mysterious death that reads like some kind of contrived malarkey from a young adult mystery novel.