Crazy talk.
This won’t happen, but I’m a little dizzy from the last two days of offensive anemia that wrapped up an otherwise acceptable road trip, and because it crossed my mind, I’ve decided to dump it on you as well.
This isn’t really just about getting shut down by King Felix or Vidal Nuno, and nobody challenged me to write a report about Milt Cuyler. It’s just me thinking aloud, in a bit of a timewaste.
It was 35 years ago when Texas, two years after having badly traded for left-handed reliever Sparky Lyle, sent him to Philadelphia for a player to be named later (lefty Kevin Saucier, who lasted three winter weeks before the Rangers moved him as well, to Detroit for utility infielder Mark Wagner).
Lyle pitched 10 times down the stretch of that 1980 season for Philadelphia, holding NL hitters to a .220/.293/.300 slash line and posting a 1.93 ERA. He pitched in six Phillies wins and four losses, recording two saves and two holds.
Philadelphia survived the NL East race, winning it by one game over Montreal.
And then the Phillies won the NLCS, in five games, over Houston.
And then the World Series, in six, over Kansas City.
Lyle didn’t pitch for Philadelphia against the Astros or Royals, because he couldn’t. The Phillies didn’t acquire him from Texas until September 13, which by rule made him ineligible for the post-season. Only players in a playoff team’s organization as of August 31 are eligible to play that season past 162.
Cuyler had been toiling in the independent leagues for nearly two years when, on September 5, 1998, Texas signed him away from the Nashua Pride of the Atlantic League. The club assigned him to AAA Oklahoma for a couple days, and after an 0 for 6 run (four strikeouts) and one failed stolen base attempt, he was summoned to Texas.
Cuyler sat on the Rangers bench for a week before getting into a game. On September 15, with Texas trailing Baltimore, 5-4, he pinch-ran for Will Clark, who had legged out an infield single to lead off the top of the ninth. Cuyler then trotted home as Pudge Rodriguez homered off Armando Benitez, staking the Rangers to a 6-5 lead that John Wetteland would preserve. The win would pull Texas to within one game of the division lead.
Two days later, with Texas and Anaheim tied atop the West, Lee Stevens singled off Angels reliever Pep Harris to lead off the bottom of the eighth in a 6-6 game, and Cuyler was inserted to run for Stevens. Todd Zeile bunted Cuyler to second. Rich DeLucia entered and hit Royce Clayton with a pitch. Tom Goodwin then doubled to center, bringing Cuyler home. Wetteland retired Anaheim in order in the ninth, and Texas won, 7-6.
The Rangers ultimately won the West by three games, earning a second-ever playoff berth.
Clark would have scored on Pudge’s bomb, and Stevens might have scored from second on Goodwin’s double, but the point is this: Texas acquired Cuyler that September with a clear purpose — to help the club in very specific situations get to the post-season, just as Philadelphia had done with Lyle, even though those post-seasons would have to go on without them.
The Rangers claimed left-handed reliever Michael Tejera off waivers from the Marlins on September 10, 2004, with the club five games back in the AL West and 22 to go. He was brilliant in his Rangers debut on September 12, punching out four of five Blue Jays faced in what was an eventual 7-6 Texas win, but I’ve now belabored the point enough.
Texas faces two ordinary (and therefore potentially frightening) lefties this weekend (Oakland’s Sean Nolin and Felix Doubront) and will face two tough southpaws (Dallas Keuchel and Scott Kazmir) when Houston visits next week. Nuno stands to get the ball again when the Mariners are here next weekend, and if the A’s stay in rotation, Nolin and Doubront will be on the hill again when the Rangers visit Oakland. You can bet on Keuchel and Kazmir again in Houston on the season’s penultimate weekend, and then Texas hosts Detroit, which features three lefthanders in its rotation, and the Angels, who will probably have Andrew Heaney and Hector Santiago on the mound sometime in that set of four.
I’m not suggesting you load up with a front-tier prospect to go get Justin Upton, in hopes that he can help you win one game between now and October 4. (The Padres will get a supplemental first-round pick if he leaves this winter, so the cost would be high.) Plus, I’m not even sure if Upton cleared trade waivers — surely he didn’t — and I’m not going to take the time to research it.
His brother Melvin doesn’t hit anyone other than the Rangers, and doesn’t hit lefties particularly well, plus he’s under contract through 2017. No.
Atlanta’s Cameron Maybin: waivers issue, contract length. No.
Philadelphia’s Jeff Francoeur has become somewhat of a punch line/meme, and really, even though he’s had a decent year and would arguably be a better option than Drew Stubbs or Ryan Strausborger, his success has come against right-handed pitching this season (.827 OPS), not lefties (.653 OPS).
Plus, there’s the matter of what a deal like this would take. Look at what Texas gave up for two months and five more years after that of Sam Dyson, and for six weeks of Will Venable, especially when either one would be eligible for the playoffs. Anyone Texas picks up today wouldn’t be. So you’re not going to give up Ryan Cordell, or Yohander Mendez, or Josh Morgan. And I wonder whether a team would take someone like Kellin Deglan or Luke Tendler in a situation like this.
I don’t really have any specifics here to support this exceedingly unlikely premise, unless the Giants — 8.5 games out in the NL West and 9.0 back in the Wild Card chase — want to talk about Marlon Byrd, but there’s just three weeks and change left in this pennant race, the Rangers aren’t hitting lefties (not that they’re torching righthanders at the moment), and if the sprint to the finish doesn’t have you a little frenzied yourself, just wait.
It’s about to get insane.