The Rangers have placed lefty Cole Hamels on the 10-day DL, per a club announcement. He was scratched from his most recent start with an oblique strain; the injury is expected to cost him around eight weeks, per the club.
Hamels, 33, was expected to anchor the rotation alongside Yu Darvish. But he has struggled to open the season, recording only 4.1 K/9 against 3.3 BB/9 over his 32 2/3 innings. Hamels has still managed a strong 3.03 ERA, so the bottom-line looks good, but his swinging-strike rate (7.5%) is lagging far behind his career average (12.3%) and he is benefiting from a .219 BABIP.
Righty Anthony Bass has been brought up to take the open roster spot. While his first (and so far, only) MLB outing of the year went poorly, he has been pitching well at Triple-A since returning from a 2016 stint in Japan. Over 9 1/3 innings, Bass has allowed just one earned run and only four hits while recording an outstanding 17:4 K/BB ratio.
Rangers starters currently rate third in the Majors with a 3.45 ERA, but their 4.68 FIP and 4.71 xFIP rank among the bottom third of the league, and their 4.89 SIERA is the second-worst mark in baseball. In other words, regression from this unit already looked likely, and subtracting Hamels from the mix doesn’t figure to do Texas any favors. As can be seen on their depth chart at Roster Resource, the top internal candidates to fill in for Hamels are A.J. Griffin, Clayton Blackburn, Eddie Gamboa and Dillon Gee.
Oh man so now they have darvish and absolutely nothing else behind him? Rough start in Arlington.
Check our starters ERA. Was best in the AL
Key word was…. now that you had to bring up Bass and Martinez is pitching out of his mind and it’s only a 2.77. You also have 3 starters right at or under 200 batting. Point is y’all are in trouble April is a important month it cost us the playoff last year.
Rangers traditionally start off bad in April and turn it up during the season. Astros fall apart looking over their shoulder when at or near top of the division.
Starting pitching has not been a problem this year. The lack of hitting is.
As the starter explodes
Not in there recent years? 8 games back of first if the Astros close them out tonight. That ludacris to start that bad!
Or even ludicrous.
Your team also has the 13th ERA the Astros 3rd….. Yalls highest starters batting average is 287 we have multiple guys over 300 (4) and out lowest Starter is 226 and it’s Correa
No one is denying the hitting has been horrendous.
They have good pitchers besides hamels and darvish
Matt Bush is awesome and his story is too! The rest of the bullpen has been melting down though. The guy that spit started last night was also superb
Spit starts are risky. The umps might find the saliva on the ball and eject him.
Lol nice catch typo meant spot started
And a non existent bullpen
Astros haven’t played a tough team except the Indians and they took 2 from Astros. Enjoy the easy schedule right now…
It’s all against the division have fun with this game
And it’s great these are division games because they matter more for tie breakers
Oh and btw those two loses were each by one run it’s not like we got blown out you can’t justify your team is trash right now. April matters it’s hard as hell to make up for when we went crap 7-17 last year we hard one of the best second halfs but still couldn’t catch anyone. This time establishes your team also you start looking at buying or selling. Do you really want to lose Darvish for a comp pick since the system changed and it’s not as great for the teams anymore?
pitchers going down like crazy
those k/9 and bb/9 are… wow
With all the pitchers going down it’ll be interesting to see how this affects the market, though there’s A LOT of baseball left. That being said, I know my Braves have 3 vets that are pitching decently to attract some attention (as patchwork arms), if ATL is interested in dealing them though it’s still early.
An example that could be in play for the braves as well
3 of the 5 starters the padres have
Those three picked up on one year deals cannot be traded without consent until June 15th
Why do you keep trying to peddle this narrative that Garcia and Dickey are pitching decently. They aren’t.
R.I.P. 2017 Rangers.. deadline is going to be fun following that team
Darvish, Lucroy, Beltre, Gomez, .. the list goes on..
Yeah, in a weird way having a bad 1st half of the year might be a great thing for the Rangers long-term. They can rebuild their farm and reload this offseason.
Maybe, if so, don’t expect to buy cheap.
Astros will most likely run away with the division, I guess the wild card could be interesting.
There’s still hope.
… not sure I like this 10-day DL idea. I miss the days of “skippping a start,” sounds far less threatening.
Ha. 10 day? He’s out for 8 weeks.
Darvish to the Dodgers for alex verdugo and willie kalhon
Click…