I know that it is early in the season and that eight games it not enough of a sample to trend what a team and for that matter a player is going to do in the 2009 MLB season.
However, the early returns can begin to paint the picture of what is going to happen throughout the season. Right now the Rangers bullpen is heading down the wrong path.
The Rangers did get off to a great start by winning their first three games at home against the Cleveland Indians, but since then a three-game sweep at the hands of the Tigers and so far losing the first two to the Orioles.
In years past one of the pitching problems has been that the starting pitchers have not been going very deep into their starts at all. However, for the most part, that hasn’t been the case through the first eight games.
Kevin Millwood has been near perfect in both of his starts, pitching seven innings in each with an ERA of 0.64, 11 K, and only allowing nine hits so far.
Brandon McCarthy has been solid in both his starts, going five innings and then six and allowing only three runs in both of them.
The rest of the staff, Matt Harrison, Vicente Padilla, and Kris Benson, have been shaky at best so far this year.
The major concern of the Texas Rangers has always been the pitching and so far the starting rotation has performed a little above average.
The offense has been superb at times and then had stretches of power outages. The defense has been very solid and had only one costly error so far, that came from rookie Elvis Andrus.
The final piece, and through the first eight games it has been the missing piece that has kept this Rangers team from being above .500, that is the relief pitching.
The Rangers won the first three games of the year at home, but had the offense not shown the power that they did the team would have lost the third and maybe even the second game.
So far this season the Rangers bullpen has combined for 25.1 innings pitched, allowing 23 earned runs (27 total runs) on 29 hits. The bullpen is 0-2 with only one save, walking a combined 17 batters and picking up 25 strikeouts. The worst stat is the combined bullpen ERA is 8.17.
The closer Frank Francisco has been perfect in all four of his outings, grabbing the one save in the second game of the year. Jason Jennings, three perfect outings, is falling into a nice little niche and might become the set-up man in the future.
On the flip-side of the coin, Scott Feldman lost his starting role to Kris Benson and looks lost so far in the bullpen with a 12.60 ERA. Eddie Guardado and C.J. Wilson have both given up 4+ innings that have cost the team games, and Warner Madrigal and Josh Rupe are both posting 13.50 ERA’s.
Again, I know that it has only been eight games and you can’t make any long-term predictions, but if the Rangers pitching staff continues on this course it’s not only going to be a long season, it’s going to be a sub-.500 season….again.
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