A lonestar in california

It’s tough times for the Texas Rangers and their fans right now. For the second game in a row, the Rangers took a lead into the 8th inning, and for the second straight game, the bullpen could not hold on. And this time it wasn’t Joaquin Benoit, but a combination of Wes Littleton and closer CJ Wilson that managed to blow the second consecutive save.

The Rangers got off to a flying start, and appeared to have the game well in hand for the first 6 innings. Ian Kinsler lead the game off with his first home run of the year, a soaring shot up into the green moster off Tim Wakefield, and the Rangers added on from there. Hank Blalock came across in the second inning on a Gerald Laird groundout (an inning that had potential, but fizzled thanks to a bad call to bunt the runners over with nobody out by Ron Washington), and Milton Bradley added what the Rangers thought would be the coup de grace in the 6th inning, when he hammered a three run homer over the monster. Manny Ramirez even did the Rangers the favor of getting himself ejected in the second inning for arguing balls and strikes, robbing the Red Sox of their cleanup bat for the majority of the game.

Kevin Millwood, in search of his first win on the road since June of ‘07, also pitched 6 shutout frames, giving up 8 hits and walking two while striking out 7 on the use of 106 pitches. You’d have thought the Rangers would have been happy with that. But Ron Washington elected to send Millwood back out for another inning in the 7th, and that was when the trouble started. Millwood was clearly gassed, as his 107th pitch of the day got hammered by Jed Lowrie for a leadoff double. David Ortiz singled him in, and that was it for Millwood. Wes Littleton made the jog from the bullpen to the mound to take over, but promptly hit his first batter, Joe Thurston, to put runners on first and second. He got Kevin Youkilisto ground into a double play, but JD Drew singled in Ortiz with 2 out, making it 5-3.

The bottom of the 8th though, was when things truly fell apart. Littleton got the first two batters of the innings on a groundout and a strikeout, and things where looking good. Cue the Red Sox miracle rally.

Jacoby Ellsbury singled, and was promptly doubled in by Jed Lowrie(who already seems to be earning the title of Ranger-killer, even with only a handful of Major League games under his belt). After that, Ron Washington finally made a correct decision regarding his bullpen management for once, calling closer CJ Wilson from the bullpen to bail Texas out of the inning. Too bad things didn’t go as planned. I’ll spare you the ugly play-by-play details, but CJ gave up 2 runs on 2 hits and three walks, without getting anyone out. In fact, he committed what I personally consider to be the ultimate sin for a late-inning reliever: with the bases loaded, and Sean Casey, AKA artifact from the stone age at the plate, he walked in the go-ahead run.

A fittingly pathetic climax to yet another mind-numbing job by the Rangers of giving away a game. Blowing a 3-2 lead against the Red Sox is one thing, but squandering a 5-run lead against anyone, be it the Red Soxor the Bad News Bears, is just unacceptable. Which of course, kind of defines the play of our Texas Rangers in the last week or so: aside for those two games in Toronto (or one of those games, at least) “unacceptable” is a good way to define the Rangers, who are 2-8 over their last 10.

So who takes the heat for all this? Well, there’s only one guy I can think of, and that’s Ron Washington. While he may not be directly responsible for some of the pitching meltdowns of Sunday and Saturday night at the end of the day, he’s the one who’s supposed to be leading this team and it’s players, and keeping them fighting through the rough patches. But the team continues to flounder, and his in-game management decisions, which have ranged from questionable (like having David Murphy bunt with 2 on and nobody out in the second inning Sunday) to puzzling (like sending Kevin Millwood out for the 7th inning after he had already thrown 106 pitches, a decision that seemed to open the floodgates for the Boston rally). Whether you think it’s “fair” to Ron Washington to be judged by the on-field failures of the teams players or not, it’s his job to be responsible for them, just as it was Joe Torre’s job to take the heat after the Yankees failed in the playoffs last season. That’s what you sign on for when you take the job of a Major League manager, and Washington has seemed ill-equipped to deal with his teams failure going all the way back to last season’s horrible first half – his questionable managing decisions, ill-advised experiments, rampant favoritism of sub-par players and continued “rookie mistakes” have more often than not backfired to stoke the fires of failure. Simply put, Ron Washington is in way over his head when it comes to trying to fix the problems of the Texas Rangers - at this point, a change of manager seems be in order, if for no other reason than restoring the confidence of the team and the fan base in the leadership, not to mention for the sake of getting someone into the position who can actually get the job done.

Of course, only time will tell exactly what happens to Ron Washington, but barring a sudden sharp turnaround in the teams play, and a sharp turnaround in the manegerial mistakes of Washington himself, his days in Texas are most certainly numbered – which, in my opinion, may be a very fortunate thing for the interests of both parties.

But I digress. Enough of all the Ron Washington doomsday talk – we have a few other random Ranger notes to ruminate on real quick:

TR Sullivan has an update on John Patterson, who continues to make progress in his recovery from last season’s arm surgery. He’s scheduled to throw two bullpen sessions for the management in Texas this week, and will then head back to Surprise, AZ, to pitch in actual extended spring training games. The article suggests that Patterson ”could be an option” to pitch in the Majors by mid-May, should the team need another starting pitcher. Brandon McCarthy is still on the 60-day DL with elbow inflammation, will not be ready to come back until some time in June, so it’s looking like it’s not a matter of if, but when Patterson will get his chance at a return to glory – this is looking like one low-risk signing by JD that certainly has the potential to pay huge dividends if all goes well.

TR also has a pieceon the sudden spurt of playing time Jason Botts has gotten, after being literally shunned by Ron Washington over the first couple weeks of the season. Ron still obviously has a man-crush on Ben Broussard, and refuses to yet proclaim a platoon between Broussard and Botts, but he begrudgingly admits Botts seems to have something:

“I trust Ben Broussard,” Washington said. “But the way Botts is doing things, he deserves some time. He’s certainly swinging the bat well, and we can always use the offense. I haven’t been calling it a platoon, but he’s certainly going to get more time.”

I love the way Wash casually says “We can always use the offense”. Yeah, Ron, that’s right - in fact, that’s kind of the whole point. Sigh. I think you can tack this quote on to the list of reasons above Wash should be canned.

Even Grant also has some notesthat include some more about Ben Broussard’s slump, and an interesting tidbit that the Rangers could have some interest in DH Frank Thomas, who was just released by the Blue Jays, but fortunately JD says “On the surface, I’m not sure it makes sense for us right now.” Damn straight.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia watch:Salty had another rough day at the plate after getting Saturday off, as he was 0-4 with a walk and a run scored Sunday. He’s had back-to-back 0-for games, and seems to have cooled off from his RBI-manufacturing hot streak of a week ago – he needs to pick things up again if he’s gonna take advantage of the struggles of Gerald Laird (who by the way was 0-3 Sunday, to drop his average to .207 – and he also allowed three stolen bases to the Red Sox.) 

Tomorrow, Kason Gabbard takes on his former team and rookie Clay Buchholz at Fenway, in a Patriots Day game that will start at 10:05 CT. I’m pretty suprised the baseball scheduling gurus would do something like that – do they not want anybody to watch this game? That’s smack in the middle of the work day. Only the most diehard fans (like me – although I have the day off, so I’m good) are gonna skip work for this one. Especially after the way the last three have gone for the Rangers. In fact, there’s a part of me that’s considering just sleeping in. We’ll see, but more than likely, I’ll be up and taking it in, as miserable as it may turn out to be. What can I say, bad baseball is better than no baseball.