00:00No longer first place Texas Rangers as they are now 9-9 and the A's take over first place in
00:13the West.
00:13You know what's really weird? Outside of the first game and after that and into the second game,
00:20the Rangers have not alternated wins or losses.
00:25They won four in a row, lost four in a row, won three in a row, lost two in a
00:29row, won two in a row, lost two in a row.
00:32So we have not had some of the usual win-loss-win-loss pattern that you might think from a
00:38team that thus far is 500.
00:40And if you track back their last 180 games now, they are now 90-90.
00:45So the scenario as it played out, and I know Mike was asking for this.
00:52He's like, hey, come on, Shea, why don't you take it easy on your hometown team?
00:56He most certainly does not, as he now has 12 home runs against the Texas Rangers in his career.
01:03And, you know, Beaks was living kind of dangerously last night.
01:13He escaped an inning with a couple of what would have been walks, if not for chases, first on a
01:23foul ball and then on a strikeout from A's players.
01:26Otherwise, you're like, oh, great, we're going to walk home a run.
01:29Fantastic right there.
01:31So I thought he escaped that.
01:32But the issue was you had first base open in this scenario, and that's why Schumacher, after the game, was
01:41like, look, I made a strategic mistake.
01:44This one is solely on me.
01:47And so he brought in Colwyn, and Colwyn had been kicking ass against right-handed hitters.
01:53Like, he really had.
01:54And so they're like, hey, let's go weapon on weapon.
01:59And it didn't work out.
02:02And in retrospect, Skip said it, you could have just walked him and then gone to the next one.
02:08Yeah, that kind of walks all right.
02:11The other walks don't, you know.
02:14The other walks can kind of hurt you throughout the games, as he talked about with us yesterday.
02:18And in the very next inning, Colwyn walked the first batter.
02:21Yeah, and, I mean, even Rocker had the, I think he walked Cortez, and then Soderstrom hit the double.
02:27That was the first run on the board.
02:29So last night, you know, walks kind of, they didn't get to, which is a team that has been pretty
02:34good at not doing that.
02:35But you got a good point there.
02:37In those, this is the thing, though, man.
02:41Skip is smart about this game.
02:45And then in that instance, he didn't call for that.
02:49So, but you heard him break down the Seager thing yesterday.
02:53Dude, I was fascinated by that.
02:54And I think you have a manager who is going to make some really good moments.
03:01I hope he trusts his gut a lot of times in those instances, too.
03:05And then I also hope that he never tries to outsmart himself.
03:09Because that happens to us all.
03:11Or we try to outsmart ourselves, and then we put ourselves in a bad situation when we just know what
03:16the data tells us and what we should do.
03:18And what our gut actually says as well.
03:20But, yeah, to score five for this team and not win, kind of a rough night.
03:25Yeah, and I, Cole Wynn, he just, he wasn't good yesterday.
03:32Because you also had the, you also had the Jacob Wilson home run, which I'm pretty sure that was his
03:39first home run of the season.
03:41But leading into this, I could see why you would have thought, hey, man, we need to go with Cole
03:48Wynn.
03:49Cole Wynn had not given up a run so far.
03:53I think he had been in eight games, I want to say, seven and two-thirds innings pitched, only five
04:02hits given up.
04:03And so he had been doing really, really well.
04:06Everything you'd asked him to do.
04:07Yeah, exactly.
04:08And we talked about it.
04:09Like, you'd never seen him extend out past four outs.
04:11And I still think that might be the way to go.
04:14But he just was not sharp yesterday.
04:16And so, yeah, Cole Wynn takes a hit and Rocker ends up with a pedestrian at best outing in part
04:26because of what you just said, Corey, the issues with all of the walks.
04:31And now I'm just a tiny bit sad that I did not ask, is Gavin Collier one of the people
04:37on the plane?
04:38Remember I told you yesterday that was my alternate question to Jackie Robinson Day.
04:42And he does come in there and he brings the heat, finishes out the strikeout with a 97 mile per
04:47hour to move it over to Latz, who continues to be freaking incredible this season.
04:53But it didn't end up mattering.
04:55And it was a huge change.
04:57I don't know if you all felt this way.
04:59It was a huge change from the way it looked like the game was going, right?
05:03Didn't it look like this was going to, you know, stall out into like a 3-2 game or something
05:10like that?
05:11And then you get that two-run home run.
05:13You got another two-run home run.
05:14And then Berger comes out and he does the thing.
05:17And all of a sudden I'm like, holy crap, can we win this game again?
05:21Yeah, Young lining at the center was kind of the – because I'm thinking to myself, as we were discussing
05:26yesterday, Josh Young's kind of on it again.
05:29Yeah.
05:29You know, like he might be a savior for this.
05:31This is that moment for him.
05:33He hit that ball to center too hard.
05:36You know, like, it's weird because you look at the exit velocity and you're like, oh, this is more than
05:41100 exit velocity.
05:42Good job.
05:43He made great contact with that.
05:44And you're like, I wish that exit velo would have been a little lower because then that would have easily
05:49dropped in for a single.
05:51But the fact that he smashed it so hard – was it to Butler, I think, who picked it up?
05:56Because he hit the ball so hard.
05:59And so I thought that contact was really good right there.
06:02Yeah, but that was one of those where I was like, oh, this is his moment to recapture that.
06:07Right.
06:08And then ride that confidence.
06:11Maybe that's just not – maybe today they can get back to it, you know, split the series and get
06:16out of Sacramento and say it was a fun one.
06:19And that would put you back in the tie if you care because I know it's super early for first
06:24place.
06:24But I will tell you this, and I don't want this to sound like loser mentality because 100%, obviously, they
06:30lost the game.
06:31But I talked – we talked about this with Skip yesterday.
06:34You go back to Friday, the Rangers are dead in the water, and then they score three runs to tie
06:40it up with the Dodgers.
06:41Now I realize you ended up losing that game.
06:43You go back two days ago and you need to put up a four spot in the eighth inning.
06:48You look at last night, you get the three-run bomb from Jake Berger, who's in there as a pinch
06:55hitter, I'm pretty sure.
06:57And you've shown the ability far more than last year to score late-inning runs and late-inning runs when
07:04you're trailing.
07:05Now, you might walk away from that and be like, hey, that's great.
07:08You lost two of those three games.
07:10And that's fair.
07:11But I appreciate that you're doing something offensively when you're losing these games.
07:16Yeah.
07:18So I think that, you know, Kevin, you were talking about this earlier.
07:21It looked like it was going to stall out and be a 3-2 game.
07:23And, well, like that is the kind of beauty of baseball is that there's nine innings or eight-and-a
07:28-half at least for a reason.
07:30Sure, sure.
07:30And, like, throughout those, any pitcher can screw up.
07:35Any hitter can find that one pitch or force a pitcher to touch his nitro zone, as Alec likes to
07:41say.
07:41Mm-hmm.
07:42That's right.
07:42So, like, any of those moments can happen.
07:45And you just kind of have to hope that your guy finds that at the right spot.
07:49And then you have a collection, maybe two or three guys in a row, that put something together.
07:54And then they can do that.
07:55That's why this season is 162, right?
07:58Yeah.
07:58Like, that's why it's built this way.
08:00It's also why nobody's ever won 162 because of the variety that comes along with it.
08:05And they never will.
08:06And you know what?
08:08I'm not going to say that.
08:09All right?
08:10Because never say never is a mantra.
08:14But Skip said that.
08:16You can't win all of these games the same way.
08:19It's just not going to happen for you.
08:21So, on any given night, you've got to figure out a way.
08:23And it seems like late in games, if they haven't won it yet, they're still trying to figure that out.
08:29So, that's something I appreciate, too.
08:31And if they keep that mentality up, as we did with the Signetti thing, if you keep your standard to
08:36where it is, late in games, you're going to be like, this is what we do.
08:39And, you know, even when you need that one run to win the game, we're used to this kind of
08:44situation.
08:45Absolutely.
08:46And I think there's no question that's a positive.
08:50I understand.
08:51But I also, hold on.
08:52I'm sorry.
08:52I wanted to finish one more thing.
08:53But also, Mike was talking about this the other night.
08:57And I think you were talking about this the other day, too.
08:59With some of these really talented pitchers that you're going up against, you've got to jump on them early, too.
09:05Yes.
09:05Like, Severino, they did that the other day to him.
09:07Because what happened after they did?
09:09He figured it out.
09:11Yeah.
09:11And then ended up having a nice number of strikes.
09:14So, you've still got to figure out how to have the collection of things early in a game, but then
09:18add to it late if you need to.
09:20And that's a very compelling counterargument, right?
09:24Because the Rangers scored five runs yesterday.
09:26And I could see how you'd be like, oh, the offense was working just fine.
09:29You had three hits going into the eighth inning.
09:31Yeah.
09:31You had three hits going into the eighth inning.
09:33The night before, you didn't have a bunch of good hits, either.
09:36So, like, I see the logic of, hey, if you score five runs, you probably feel like a good chunk
09:41of the time, especially with the staff, you're going to win.
09:44But you also had three hits going into the eighth inning.
09:47So, that's probably not going to cut it.
09:48And that's where, like, I do like to see that you had five walks.
09:51That shows that you are having competitive at-bats.
09:53Again, you can't let your other pitching staff have six walks.
09:58True.
09:58You know, like, that's what they've kind of hung their hat on is that they don't walk a lot of
10:03people based on the way they go throw strikes.
10:05But, Kevin, I think the one thing that will carry over if they stay disciplined like this throughout the season
10:12is if they stay with this, we know what the strike zone is.
10:16As we know where our strike zone is, the percentages will fall in their favor where they will have now
10:22– where they'll have more of those competitive at-bats that turn into walks, that turn into big innings, that
10:28turn into rallies.
10:30Yeah.
10:30I think they're going to have more of that.
10:31But at some point, you do have to have a group of your guys get hot.
10:36Skip said yesterday.
10:37We haven't even got hot offensively.
10:39We've just done the – right over the bare minimum of what we need.
10:43We do need to find some dudes that are just going to go on a tear.
10:47Now, there was a whole lot of movement in the bullpen, as we told you there would be.
10:52The Rangers put Curvello and Chris Martin both on the 15-day injured list, which, again, for Curvello, that feels
10:59like a minor miracle given what happened when he left the game.
11:04And they pulled up Cal Quantrill, which he was a candidate to make the team break in camp, and Gavin
11:10Collier, who we just talked about.
11:12You saw the look from that last night.
11:13But to make room for both of those, Cody Bradford was transferred to the 60-day injured list.
11:19I feel like they've always been keeping that in their pocket.
11:21And then Mark Church was DFA'd.
11:25It's kind of a surprise that he loses that 46 spot.
11:27And so Mark Church, who we've talked about, I think the arm talent is unbelievable, and we love talking with
11:34him.
11:34But early on in the minors, 7.71 ERA with four walks and four and a third.
11:43So you just talked about the walks.
11:45There's an issue right there.
11:46So you've got seven days to figure it out.
11:49You can trade the player.
11:51Don't think that's going to happen.
11:52Put him on waivers, which is, I think, what will happen, allowing other teams to claim him.
11:57I don't think so.
11:59Release the player unconditionally or outright the player to the minors if he clears waivers and consents when required.
12:05I still think that is what's going to happen.
12:09Obviously, he can leave the organization.
12:11But I still think he clears waivers and goes back to the minors.
12:15One other thing to keep an eye on that we asked Skip about yesterday.
12:19The Rangers, yesterday, was the deadline to purchase the contract of Josh Spores.
12:24The Rangers declined to do that.
12:27Interesting.
12:28So here's what happens next.
12:29And this is a very NFL, NBA-style thing.
12:33Spores on Wednesday did exercise that clause in his contract, which lets all other 29 Major League teams know he's
12:40available on a Major League team.
12:42But, a Major League deal.
12:44But, if a team adds him to their Major League roster, the Rangers have 48 hours to counter by adding
12:51him to their roster.
12:53So the Rangers are kind of taking a chance that no team's going to pick up Spores on their Major
12:57League roster.
12:58Or, they're like, fine.
12:59Pick him up.
13:00We'll match it.
13:01And that gives us an extra two days.
13:03I just would have thought...
13:05So, of any team, they know the most.
13:07Yeah.
13:07Yeah.
13:07I just would have thought, with the need for Quantrill and the need for Collier, it would have been a
13:12logical time to say, if we are in on Spores, bring him up.
13:15Yeah.
13:16But they chose not to do that.
13:18So, keep your eye out on that, because one of your World Series heroes could be out the door.
13:22Oh, well, we're used to that at this point.
13:24Kevin, um...
13:26Well, I mean, they maxed it out for one year.
13:29We appreciate it.
13:29No, you're not around.
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