00:00But unfortunately, offensively, there's a whole lot of other things that are not working for them.
00:06The rest of it, the offense has been offensive.
00:08Yes, I think that is unfortunately a very fair way to put it.
00:14So what I kind of wanted to break down is I wanted to run through a few different spots
00:18where maybe you want to change, maybe you want to consider a short-term, long-term change
00:24for the Rangers, and who are the options if you decide to make that change.
00:30So right now, the Texas Rangers have scored the least amount of runs in the American League.
00:36They've scored the third least amount of runs in all of baseball.
00:41And the two teams that have scored fewer runs than them, the Giants and the Mets, are a combined 27
00:47and 45.
00:49Oh, okay. All right. Things are going good then, swimmingly.
00:52No, that's bad.
00:53I don't know.
00:54All right. So let's go to second base.
00:59All right.
01:00This one seems the simplest.
01:02If you want to sub out Josh Smith, who we've talked about it.
01:05We talked about it with Skip Schumacher.
01:06We talked about it with Jared.
01:08Not only has he not been up to par offensively, he's been struggling defensively as well.
01:15This one seems the simplest.
01:16Would you be good with, for maybe a prolonged period of time, subbing in Ezekiel Duran for Josh Smith?
01:25Although, to be fair, Ezekiel Duran has also turned some heads in the outfield.
01:30He started five career games in right field and has an outfield assist in the last three of them.
01:37So he can do something in the outfield as well.
01:41Well, I will say this.
01:43Even when Marcus Simeon wasn't hitting well, his defense always justified him being out on the field.
01:50I get that.
01:51And I can't say, for certain, like, Josh Smith makes some good hustle plays, but consistency-wise, he is not
01:59Marcus Simeon, and that's tough to be.
02:00Sure.
02:01Like, it just is.
02:02I do think Ezekiel Duran can justify both the balance with his bat.
02:08So, yes, Kevin, at the moment, Josh Smith has to get out of his own head.
02:12He earned the spot.
02:14Everything he did in spring training earned the spot.
02:17Yeah.
02:17And then since then, I don't know that he let off the gas or just it changed.
02:23Maybe chasing that again would be something that would get him back to that place.
02:27Do you wish he was all gas and no brake?
02:29Having to present, having, um, sure.
02:32Okay.
02:32But having to, having to earn something seems to be the thing that he, that motivates him or gets him
02:39in that place.
02:40Okay.
02:40All right.
02:41So, yeah, dude, but here's the thing, as you've said, Zeke is one of those dudes that you can put
02:46in a lot of different places.
02:47He's on this roster.
02:48And that's like, he kind of feels like the hitting version of Jacob Latz.
02:53Yes, exactly.
02:54That's exactly what I think.
02:55All right.
02:56First base.
02:57Jake Berger is clearly struggling.
03:00And the issue that you run into with Jake Berger is when he struggles at the plate in terms of
03:08getting hits, he doesn't really walk.
03:11And so you're going to run into this giant void of on-base percentages.
03:17On-base percentage this year is awful.
03:19It's 248.
03:20Cody Freeman is out until at least the final week of May.
03:25Would you consider, we had to dig a little deeper on this one, Justin Foscue or Jonah Bride?
03:32And we might have people right now that are saying, who the F is Jonah Bride?
03:37Fair enough.
03:37Not Jonah Heim.
03:38Who's super bad.
03:39I'm not.
03:39That is Jonah Hill.
03:41I'm not confused about that.
03:43We'll talk about Jonah Heim later.
03:45But Justin Foscue, he's had some chances.
03:49He feels like a guy who might be your 3.5A, 4A player that is just unfortunately not suited to
03:56hit at the major leagues.
03:58By the way, if you think of him as a young player, he's already 27.
04:01So again, that's young for a human.
04:04But in baseball, this is like when your prime should be starting.
04:07The other one that I want you to think about is Jonah Bride.
04:11Now, Jonah Bride is 30, and here's kind of the breakdown I got about him.
04:21He is somebody who has never really had success in the big leagues.
04:27At all.
04:27When they need him to hit lefties, he can't.
04:31Sweet.
04:32So he'll beat down AAA pitching, which is what he's doing right now.
04:37And he might be your best shot at somebody who gets hot for two weeks.
04:42We had one season in Miami where he was, like in 272 at-bats, 11 home runs, had an OPS
04:49of 818.
04:50Other than that, he's in the 400 range.
04:52Like, that's just kind of where he is.
04:55It's an option.
04:56I think Foscue is my favorite option here.
04:59Yes.
04:59Short term.
05:00And with Berger, it does seem kind of like he needs to kind of go clear his head and get
05:05back to it.
05:06Because the season, again, spring training hot, start of the season strong,
05:12and then kind of has become a roller coaster of missed pitches and whiffs.
05:16So I would say, yes, Foscue would be a short-term option for me.
05:23There were a couple dudes you had on the roster in spring training that requested away.
05:27And now you're kind of like, dadgum, we wish we would have kept them around.
05:31And that's why I wonder if you were, whether it's Foscue or Bride, you're probably talking about a short-term
05:37thing.
05:37All right.
05:38It's always the bridesmaid, right?
05:40That never the bride.
05:41Gotcha.
05:42Now, for Ketcher, this might be a really simplistic way of thinking about it,
05:47but I can't stop thinking about it ever since Evan Grant was like...
05:50Danny Jansen!
05:51I know.
05:52Forever!
05:52Ever since Evan Grant was like, you know Danny Jansen's more of a second-half player anyway.
05:57Been that way throughout his career.
05:58I was like, now, hear me out.
06:00Why not play Higgy more right now?
06:03So Jansen, 23 games, 73 at-bats versus Higgy, 14 games, 45 at-bats.
06:09Why not balance that out a little bit more?
06:11Why not try to tilt it towards Higgy early on just a little bit more if Danny Jansen is more
06:17of a second-half player?
06:19Or will that throw off his flow to get to the second half where you're like,
06:23now, I need to get all these junk at-bats and games out of the way?
06:27I don't know.
06:27So that's another suggestion for you.
06:29When does the second half start, though?
06:31Like, when exactly?
06:32Do you say after the All-Star break?
06:34I think it is after the All-Star break, which, of course, is not proportionate to half the season.
06:38Weird to me.
06:38That is...
06:39You're right.
06:39I agree with you on that.
06:41Now, we get to DH, and this is where we have a variety of things to look at.
06:47Is there any part of you that wants a break from Jock with all or most of the at-bats
06:55going to Andrew McCutcheon?
06:56Or has Jock Peterson done well enough right now that you're like, let's roll with it?
07:02Or...
07:02Hold on.
07:03Let's discuss this real quick, Kevin.
07:05Okay.
07:05Let's discuss that.
07:06We'll get to the other one in a minute.
07:07Okay.
07:09Do you know what Jock Peterson's current batting average is?
07:14205.
07:15Okay.
07:15I was going to guess 200.
07:16You know what Andrew McCutcheon's is?
07:18204?
07:19205.
07:20Okay.
07:21The war for both of those hitters.
07:24I bet that's not good.
07:25Peterson's minus 0.2.
07:27Oh, that's true.
07:27And I bet people out there are like, give me Kutch.
07:30Minus 0.3.
07:34568 OPS from McCutcheon and a 607 from Jock.
07:40It's not good either way.
07:42Yeah.
07:42So, like, that's where you're like, you're picking, trying to figure out which one's the lesser of two evils, and
07:48you don't have a real good option there.
07:50Can I ask you a question about that?
07:53Because there's always been a school of thought of, well, but I had to pinch hit a bunch, or I
07:59didn't know if I was going to play.
08:02Do you have any interest then, or are those numbers good enough to be like, no, where you put him
08:06in for a week straight?
08:08Not as a pinch hitter, not as a this or that, but like, hey, you're going to be DH-ing
08:14spot outfield every single day for a week.
08:17I might have a little more interest in it if you weren't six walks and 15 strikeouts.
08:23Okay.
08:24You know, like, then you're showing me the pay.
08:25If you're, let's say you're 12 and 9 or whatever there, you know what I mean?
08:30Balance that number out a little more, and you're showing me the patience at the plate, even though you're being
08:34put in there to hit, but you're getting on base.
08:37And I might be like, okay, let's try and do that a little bit more.
08:40Give me option number two, Kevin.
08:41I've got two more options for you, and I'll explain one of them.
08:45Cam Colley, who you know, and Orlando Martinez.
08:50Now, Cam Colley is somebody that we talked about a lot in spring training.
08:55He's been solid, but not a world beater at AAA.
08:59And explain to me what you remember Skip and other people telling us when he went back down.
09:05Or was it, I think, the discussion with Jared of if he goes down, back to AAA, he has to
09:11continue doing what he's doing here so he doesn't fall off.
09:15And then you're just like, well, what happened?
09:18And sometimes that's confidence.
09:20You're trying to make the team, you're trying to make the team, and they say, hey, we appreciate you, but
09:24not yet.
09:25Right.
09:25I experienced that personally in my life when we were like, hey, we're ready.
09:30And they were like, not yet.
09:31Yeah.
09:32And we were like, shut up, we are.
09:34Everybody thinks they are.
09:35And Cam Colley is probably at that point where he's like, dadgum.
09:38But maybe this is the right opportunity, because your team is not winning with veterans right now.
09:45Or, if you want to go more lightning in a bottle at the moment, Orlando Martinez.
09:52Now, Orlando Martinez, you would pull up from AA.
09:55And I'll just throw this out for you.
09:58In AA Frisco, three home runs, 18 RBIs.
10:02He's hitting .299 with an on-base percentage of .387 and an OPS of .882.
10:08Now, the issue that you're going to run into there is he is similar to Bride in terms of has
10:16not had that next level of success.
10:19But, what you could point out, and this is something that Jared had brought up, is he did go down
10:25to Latin America.
10:26And maybe there, he figured something out that would separate him from somebody like Bride.
10:33And I wonder if Martinez is another person that you would try for that lightning in a bottle to see
10:38if you could jumpstart part of the lineup, even if it's only for two weeks.
10:42Yeah, I guess with him at 28 years old.
10:45He's another older minor league.
10:46We have a lot of older minor league players.
10:48And being one of those guys that, like, he's not ripping, you're right, he's not tearing it up at .450
10:53in the minor leagues.
10:54But if he can be a .290 kind of guy, and maybe be a .275 kind of guy in the
11:01majors, I'd be willing to give him that opportunity.
11:04Okay, is that, does that sound, of all the options, maybe the best, like...
11:09I'll go Colley first.
11:11Okay, give Colley a short-term shot.
11:12Yeah, I'll go give Colley, but that's the balance, too, of questioning, if I bring him up for this short
11:17period of time,
11:18we've got to tell him.
11:19Yeah.
11:20It's just a short period of time, because he might not be mature enough to handle that.
11:24So maybe you're right, Kevin.
11:25Martinez is probably the best guy, because you say, hey, come up here, just be that .275 hitter.
11:29I'm not asking you to hit home runs.
11:31I'm not asking you to get on base, be productive, and then give him that opportunity to go do it
11:36so he didn't stress himself too much,
11:37and maybe he provides a little bit of punch where you need it in the lineup.
11:40Yeah, and so I just wanted to run through that, because if you want to make changes, you can't just
11:45go, well, we've got to change something.
11:46I wanted to give you options.
11:48And then, from the 6.82, you might be thinking of other shows.
11:52Same offense as the last two years.
11:54Not sure why I'll touted this as anything differently.
11:56We did not.
11:57That was one of the things we talked about ad nauseum at spring training and every other time is you
12:03got a lot of hopium happening in this lineup, and we'll see.
12:08But hope is not a strategy.
12:10So I don't think that any of us are surprised, but it still sucks.
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