1977 ALL-STAR BREAK
After a bit of a break from the Rangers Dynasty I've gone ahead and played through to the 1977 All-Star Break. And finally, Texas is dominant.
Aside from adding Bert Blyleven, a 2nd major offseason acquisition saw the return of Toby Harrah to Texas. We moved Bump Wills to Cleveland in the deal. Harrah comes in to play 2B where he plays a decent defense and brings a nice bat. It seems like Texas and Cleveland love to deal with each other.
In the same move we also brought in closer
Jim Kern from Cleveland, as the Indians had huge budget problems. Kern also played for the Rangers historically and had some good stats. In real life 1979, he finished 4th in Cy Young voting after having appeared in a whopping 71 games in relief, while sporting an amazing 1.57 ERA.
With a really solid squad now, Texas is starting to break away from the pack as we claim a 66-26 record, 13 games ahead of the Royals and 15.5 ahead of the rival Athletics. Barring a collapse it looks like we'll finally be back to the playoffs.
We sent a whole bevy of players to the All-Star Game: Bert Blyleven (SP), Jon Matlack (SP), Gaylord Perry (SP), Nolan Ryan (SP), Toby Harrah (2B), Buddy Bell (3B), Bill Madlock (DH), Al Oliver (LF), and Jeff Burroughs (RF).
Some of the player stats are listed below. Nice to see Burroughs bounce back after an awful year, as he's hitting 21 homers. Al Oliver is leading the way among batters with a .356/.399/.556 slashline, while Nolan Ryan sits at 13-3 with a 2.35 ERA to lead our pitching.