Wednesday Morning Links

This must be a very confusing Ranger pitching staff for casual fans.

Yu Darvish has been scratched from his Opening Day start. Probably because you won't stop touching yourself. T.R. Sullivan quotes Darvish as saying "If I felt right, I would continue to throw, but I didn't so I stopped throwing," which would be reassuring if it weren't so ominously vague. My ongoing online feud with Evan Grant has escalated to the point that I only link him with Katy Perry and Kelly Clarkson lyrics, so he says that Darvish's neck pain came on him like a dark horse. According to Richard Durrett, Darvish flew to Dallas yesterday to see a back specialist and, hopefully, the hastily thrown together amalgam of quirky southern stereotypes that helped Kevin Spacey in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Also, Neftali Feliz will start the year in AAA, most likely as divine retribution for that ARod .gif. Evan Grant observes that if California gurls want to see Neftali Feliz strikeouts, they're going to have to do it in Round Rock. And T.R. Sullivan tells us that Jon Daniels thinks Feliz will be back as "soon as he's ready to help us," which leaves a lot of grey area in the timetable.

So missing those two, along with perennially nonthreatening caucasian Matt Harrison, eliminates every pitcher known by the casual fan.

T.R. Sullivan's notebook abounds with joyous tidings, such as Colby Lewis not being ready for the rotation to open the season and Mitch Moreland being an option for the outfield.

Kevin Sherrington uses Broadway as a framing device for his column on the Rangers' spring, because if there's a venn diagram with less overlap than "Ranger's pitchers that are healthy" it is "Ranger fans who love Broadway musicals."

Jurickson Profar, since you've been gone the Rangers' have been scouting Rickie Weeks, and, Evan observes, as far as injuries are concerned what doesn't kill you ends up adding journeymen Chris Snyder and Daniel McCutchen to your roster.

It's not all bad news, though, as regular Ron Washington arm-slagging target Robbie Ross pitched a nice game against the Indians yesterday, with Mr. Know It All opining that Ross likely locked up a rotation spot with the outing.

Richard Durrett asks if there's an opening day starter curse, to which the answer is a scornful "no, of course not" while I ask you to politely ignore my fervent hope that Darvish will be visiting a fictional practitioner of the dark arts earlier in this post.

Finally, in recognition of a bleak spring, here's the translation of the Latin poem O Fortuna, which has gotten a lot of play as dramatic sounding music on movie soundtracks.