Portland Pines (5-16, .238, 8th AL West) @ Texas Rangers (6-15, .286, 7th AL West)
The Rangers shouldn’t be here, at the bottom, with us – they’re not world-beaters, to be sure, but they aren’t really a doormat either. On paper, they look like a gatekeeper club, that fine line between the haves and have nots. The expectation was that they’d tread water in 2020 before bringing up some of their prospects in 2021 to round out the talent on the big club – that’s when they’d start to make their move… this wasn’t supposed to be a throwaway season, the expectation was that they’d continue to move, directionally, towards their goal of being a true-blue, bonafide contender. Hell, there were even some pundits who believed they’d contend this season… so far though, any talk of them taking that next step has been a nonstarter as their lineup is in shambles (4 regulars batting under .200) and their staff has made a habit of soft-tossing grapefruits into the strike zone. Basically, they’re as bad as we are – which is a problem. Under normal circumstances, you’d see Texas on the schedule and, given the way they’ve been putting it down, feel pretty good about your chances. These are not normal circumstances because my Pines don’t really belong on the same field with these guys… we’re a glorified Triple-A club, devoid of any real prospects, and wholly incapable of competing with a club as talented as Texas. Either they continue to play well below their station and hand us a couple or we get laughed out of the league once and for all.
22 of 156: Jeremy Jackson (2-0, 1.82) @ Lance Lynn (1-3, 8.05)
Loss, 6-1. If you asked me whether or not I thought that we’d ever win another ball game this year, my answer would be a resounding ‘no’. It seems that, if nothing else, the early part of our season has taught me that a guy with an AA in Landscape Technology has no business running a baseball club… the question here is how long can I fake it before our ownership group figures out that, under my leadership, we will likely never make it.
Lance Lynn, who has sucked all year, didn’t suck tonight – he was tossing bee bees for 6.1 innings and only allowed 3 hits –
Elvis Andrus hit a 3-run triple that really should have been an inside the parker, and
Shin-Soo Choo drove in 3 to bring his RBI total up to 15 on the year. Jackson was brutalized by the Rangers lineup – he gave up a run per inning pitched (6 in total) – and even allowed
Joey Gallo’s 7th jack of the season. Interestingly, if you are a Rangers fan at least, Gallo has hit 7 jacks on 14 total hits. That means that 50% of his hits have left the park. That’s half of his hits.
Elsewhere: At less than a month into the 2020 campaign, we’ve already seen a no-no, a perfect game, and now, thanks to
Nick Ahmed, of the Arizona Diamondbacks, we can add a cycle to the mix. The 30-year-old shortstop went 4-for-4, with a single in the 3rd, a double in the 5th, a 3-run triple in the 6th, and a solo homer in the 8th. So, that’s a natural cycle for the Phoenix-based slugger.
23 of 156: Clay Buchholz (0-0, 0.00) @ Mike Minor (0-1, 5.55)
Loss, 7-3. At the rate we’re going, we will set the record for the shortest length of time from debut to folding for an expansion franchise in the history of professional sports – has there been a franchise that couldn’t even complete their inaugural season? Things were looking okay in this one early – we put up a couple of runs in the top of the first but saw our lead slip away in the bottom of the 5th, and any hope of a comeback was out of reach before the start of the 7th frame.
Buchholz got shelled, 6 earned spread across 5.2 innings of work, we left 8 stranded and continued to hit the ball like a coach-pitch club trying to hit a golf ball with a toothpick. It’s a sad state of affairs, man.
24 of 156: Mike Leake (0-2, 7.78) @ Kyle Gibson (1-3, 4.97)
Loss, 6-5. We battled, valiantly… like a loose collection of half-drunk knights who had no idea how the got a seat at the round table to begin with. A run-scoring double from
Emery Gaslin, followed by a 2-run double from
Mallex Smith, put us up one in the top of the 7th. And, before I could decide between storming the field like
Jim Valvano did at the buzzer of that NC State win or acting nonchalant like I expected the result,
Willie Calhoun hit a 2-run bomb that brought me back down to earth. We managed to put another run on the board in the top of the 8th –
Tito Escobar, who has been frigid for us lately, hit a SAC FLY to knot it up… in the end, however, all we were really doing was setting the stage for
Shin-Soo Choo, who, recognizing an opportunity to don his dusty, old cape, hit the game-winning, walk-off home run to send us off to the showers and deeper into a pit of despair the likes of which I’ve never known before.
Recap: It’s completely possible – NAY… LIKELY – that we will not win another ballgame this year. We stink, ours is an aroma of sweated onion mixed with a ripened Brie. We’ve already set the record for most returns of officially licensed team apparel, are ranked last in the AL in 5 offensive categories, and have recently been challenged to an exhibition by the winning team of the Little League World Series… they’re a scrappy group of foul-mouthed kids from the mean streets of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who’d likely sweep us without breaking a sweat.
Record: 5-19, .208, 8th in the AL West.
Up Next: We’ll head to Oakland for a three-game set against the team that swept us at home exactly one week ago tomorrow. Should be fun… we’ve lost 8 straight tilts and have the look of a club that could go 0-11 before returning to the not-so-friendly confines of Pendleton Park to take on the Seattle Mariners.