Texas Rangers Week 18 Recap

Season record: 53-53

Week 18 record: 3-4

Series record: 14-11, 9 splits

After losing the series against the Mariners and splitting the series against Oakland, the Texas Rangers will potentially end July without a series win. They’ll play two more games this month, against Seattle, so there’s still a chance, but it seems questionable.

This was a bizarre week. It seems like Odor, Mazara, and Cabrera May have potentially figured something out at the plate, and at least have been more consistent. While it was a losing week, the Rangers losses have been closer than the previous week, they’re stringing together more hits in an inning, and they’ve had more multi-run innings like we were used to seeing earlier in the season.

Overall, this week the Rangers definitely looked better than they had since the All-Star break.

And of course, Danny Santana continues to be the best batter in the lineup, batting .324 with an OPS of .943.

Speaking of Santana, he had a great at-bat in the bottom of the ninth of Sunday’s game and worked a walk. But then oddly, Forsythe was put in to pinch-run. Odd because Santana is great on the base paths and if Forsythe was a defensive substitution, why wouldn’t the Rangers just wait until the bottom of the inning? Well turns out, Danny left the game with left calf stiffness. Hopefully today’s off day will be enough to get passed that and it’s not a bigger issue that would put him on the IL.

There were other moves the Rangers made this week as well. Guzman has been sent to Nashville, Gallo had surgery to remove his hamate bone which was broken, putting him on IL, resulting in the Rangers bringing Willie Calhoun back up. Gallo will miss a minimum of four weeks. It sounds like the time table varies based on the individual — DeShields was back after three weeks but when Stanton broke his in late June 2015, he missed the rest of the season.

Hopefully Gallo will be a quick recovery but with the Rangers also being out of the playoff race, there’s no need to rush his progress.

The trade deadline is Wednesday at 3pm CT and the Rangers could still do nothing, but with Toronto trading Stroman on Sunday to the Mets, Mike Minor could be the most intriguing starter on the market. Lance Lynn could also be a piece the Rangers move, though I think either pitcher would require a really good haul for the Rangers to give them up. Hunter Pence could also be an interesting trade, which I’m surprised hasn’t been talked about as much as the possibility of a Minor deal, considering he’s having a career year as well.

Either way, it’s best to prepare yourself because there really hasn’t been a huge move yet and there’s always the potential for another Darvish trade moment where 3pm comes and he looks like he’s staying and then the trade is processed a few moments later and he’s gone.