12.
A
A few in-game tweets from last night:
Top of the 1st inning:
The Angels could have signed G-Flex. Should have. Damn.
Top of the 4th inning:
Remember the first 38 seasons of Rangers baseball when it felt like the offense, potent as it was, wasn't very good at capitalizing?
Bottom of the 5th inning:
If you've got a problem with the fact that I love having Endy somewhere in this org, let's just agree to disagree.
Bottom of the 6th inning:
Where on the list of out-of-the-blue surprises this season does Napoli's work behind plate (game-calling, receiving) rank? It's up there.
Top of the 8th inning:
And.....then Endy does that.
27th out:
3-5-7.
Back to that first tweet for a second. I'm just about ready to say that Adrian Beltre is my favorite player on the Texas Rangers.
Ever.
And you know what he has in common with the pre-2010 Texas Rangers franchise?
One playoff win.
Not a series win. A game. He was with the Dodgers in 2004 when they managed to take one game in their best-of-five against St. Louis in the NLDS.
This is Beltre's 14th season in the big leagues. In nine of his first 13, he's been on a winning team, but he's been to the playoffs just once, and got to celebrate only one victory, a 4-0 win on October 9, 2004 in which he struck out twice, rolled out to shortstop, and grounded a single to center field.
The next day, former Rangers Wilson Alvarez, Yhency Brazoban, Mike Venafro, and Eric Gagné all pitched in relief of starter Odalis Perez as Los Angeles bowed out of the series in a 6-2 loss.
It came nine years after Beltre's pro career had started, at age 16 in the Dominican Summer League in 1995, the same year that the movie "12 Monkeys" came out, and in what is now a 17-year pro career, 14 of those seasons as a Major Leaguer, the guy has played in just one playoff series, winning one game.
Whether he'd be on his way to the post-season had the Angels signed him this winter, as they should have, is hard to say, but it's difficult to deny that they'd have had a better chance if they had Beltre, and that the Rangers wouldn't be quite where they are.
It was one of the only things Ben Rogers, Richard Durrett, Bryan Dolgin, and I didn't get around to in yesterday's hour-long baseball roundtable on the Ben & Skin Show (you can listen here), but I'm gonna say this right now:
There's no player for whom I want this season to go past 162 more than G-Flex.
