Thoughts on a 13-6 Rangers win

Rangers 13, Astros 6

• That was quite the beating the Rangers administered to the Astros tonight.  With Scott Baker starting for the Rangers, no less.
• Another nice start and another win for Baker, who is now 3-3 on the season.  He's actually shown enough of late that I'm finding myself wondering if he's not going to end up being in some team's rotation to start 2015.
• With the game in blowout mode, Alex Claudio got to pitch 1.2 IP, and had a bizarre outing.  He faced 10 batters, threw 41 pitches, 27 for strikes.  He allowed singles to 4 of the 10 batters he faced, and walked another one.  Of the 5 batters he retired, 4 of them were on strikes.  He got 5 swinging strikes to the 10 batters he faced.  Scott Baker, as a point of comparison, got 5 swinging strikes to the 23 batters he faced.
• Neal Cotts pitched the 9th and gave up 3 runs.  But he can't be traded and these games don't matter, so who really cares.  Maybe pumping up his ERA will make it cheaper for Texas to bring him back next season.
• Ryan Rua made his major league debut tonight, playing first base.  He's the 59th player to play for the Rangers this season, which ties the major league record.  And we haven't even gotten to September yet, when rosters expand.  This season is amazing.
• Every Ranger player got at least one hit tonight, including Rua, whose single tonight was his first major league hit.
• Michael Choice, batting 9th tonight behind, among others, Rua and Tomas Telis, went 3 for 4 tonight with a single, a double and a homer.  And the home run was a thing of beauty, a 2 out, 3 run homer that was blasted off of a Brett "Over the Shoulder" Oberholtzer meatball.  Now, some will say, of course Choice crushed it, it was a bad pitch, poorly located.  But every bad pitch doesn't get crushed...the hitter still has to do something with it, even if it is a mistake pitch.  Hopefully, Choice falling a triple short of the cycle is the start of him doing some damage over the final month of the season.
• Rougned Odor went 2 for 5 tonight, including a three run bomb in the 7th inning off of someone named Buchanan who pitches for the Astros.  I don't know who that is, and I'm not going to bother looking up his first name.  It was quite a home run, though.
• I have no idea what is going on with Dan Robertson, but after spending the first couple of months in the majors being the guy who was just hanging around because the team needed a warm body, he's actually ended up being pretty good this year.  He went 2 for 4 with a walk tonight, with one of his hits a hustle single when he beat out a grounder to second that Jose Altuve was a little too lackadaisical on.  He's now at .302/.375/.364 on the season.  It seems likely that one of the Rangers COF spots in 2015 will be a cheap platoon situation, and I'm starting to think that maybe Robertson is a viable option for the short side of the platoon.
• Elvis Andrus was 1 for 3 with a walk and a sac fly tonight while DHing.  I'm not sure why Elvis was DHing today after also being the DH two days ago, though there has been some suggestions from the beat writers that he's not 100% healthy, and this may be Wash trying to get him some semi-rest.  I guess the alternative is that they want to watch Adam Rosales play shortstop, for whatever reason.
• Speaking of Rosales, he went 3 for 5 tonight, and is now hitting .333/.405/.520 on the season.  So plan on seeing him back on the Rangers' roster in 2015.
• Adrian Beltre also had 2 hits and a walk.  Because of course he did.  He's Adrian Beltre.
• I'm going to the game tomorrow with Rowan.  Everyone watch for me.  I'll be the middle-aged guy with the little girl.
• And according to the beat writers on Twitter, Miles Mikolas has been scratched from tomorrow night's start, and Robbie Ross will be starting in his place.  Which is fine with me, because I'm pretty sure I've already seen 3 or 4 Mikolas starts in person this year.