Home cooking.
The compound featured an element of embarrassment and one of catalysis, or maybe it was just baseball cycle at work, and not the Adrian Beltre variety.
On Tuesday the Rangers were battered at home (21-5, Yankees). On Wednesday, the front office delivered Cole Hamels and Jake Diekman.
Since then, Texas has played eight games and won seven, all in Arlington, and shouldn’t have lost the one.
It’s the first feeling of Castle Doctrine this team has provided all season, and as long as baseball’s best road club doesn’t reverse its fortunes the way it has at home, this race is on.
The bullpen remains a vulnerability — and how would these last eight have gone without Diekman (a tack-on by the seller) and Sam Dyson (why would Miami trade a guy with that kind of stuff for a backup catcher and minor league left-handed specialist?) — but here comes Luke Jackson, an intriguing addition to a bullpen sorely lacking in swing-and-miss, and maybe Tanner Scheppers gets a quick turn with either Brad Holman (Round Rock) or Jeff Andrews (Frisco) to work some mechanical things out before he returns.
And maybe Nick Martinez joins the bullpen once Derek Holland makes his sometime-in-August return. Unless the Rangers opt to deploy Holland in relief himself, at first.
Yes, Nick Williams (7 for 13 with two homers and two doubles and two walks and one strikeout) and Jake Thompson (7-6-1-1-0-1) and Jerad Eickhoff (6-6-1-1-1-7) have gotten off to very good starts in the Phillies system, even if Alec Asher’s debut (6-9-4-4-3-2) wasn’t as sparkling, but that’s a good thing the way I look at it, not just because I’m a fan of those guys and want them to do well, but also because a reputation of mirage development is the last thing you want your team to have. You want other clubs to covet your prospects and believe in your development process.
Cody Ege fanning six in his first 3.1 frames for the Marlins’ AA affiliate? Good.
In the meantime, I’m plenty good with Diekman’s four hitless appearances and one single allowed in the other, and with Dyson’s two saves in four appearances, dicey as they were. The sink and run and the velo and the zero walks and the five remaining years of control — yes, please.
As for Hamels, there was plenty to dig in spite of the clunky 7.2-8-5-5-1-6 line in his debut, and I can’t wait to see the encore against Hisashi Iwakuma tonight.
Maybe Jackson debuts tonight late, bringing high 90s and a hammer curve that generated 54 strikeouts (17 walks) in 37.2 AAA innings (.187/.278/.266) since his conversion to relief.
We’ll need to exercise a little patience on Leonys Martin and Joey Gallo returning to the big club, but a combined five home runs last night (not a typo) is encouraging. With Martin (who added two singles and a walk to his two Thursday bombs) in particular, if he can make half the adjustments that Rougned Odor made when he played his way into a demotion in May, we’re in business.
Chi Chi Gonzalez needed a lot less than three Gallo homers and Martin’s two, holding New Orleans to one run last night on eight singles and a walk in seven frames. He’ll be back at some point.
If Williams were a right-handed hitter, maybe the Rangers wouldn’t have been willing to move him at all, but Lewis Brinson hits from the right side, plays a legitimate center field (actually an understatement), and since his promotion to Frisco that basically coincided with Williams’s departure, he’s hit in six of seven games (.393/.367/.679 in 30 plate appearances) — with multiple hits in five of those — and reportedly sent his home run last night approximately 2,000 feet while 10 Republican hopefuls beat up on each other and shortly before Jon Stewart left the air to the interestingly chosen tune of “Born to Run.”
Williams has a chance to be a frontline two-phase outfielder in the big leagues. So does Brinson, who hit .337/.416/.628 in the often misleading California League. And Brinson, again, hits right-handed. And plays a lockdown center.
Patience.
(Psst: Attend Newberg Report Night.)
(Psst: Support the Newberg Report.)
It’s Cole Hamels Day. The Rangers are back on the road, where they’ve been fantastic all year, and a week away from a return back home, where they’re suddenly playing strong baseball.
The fear that Rangers baseball would give way to Oxnard, as used to regularly happen a decade ago and earlier, is gone. We’ve got ourselves a pennant race, and you can be sure that the Astros and Angels and Blue Jays and Orioles and Twins and Rays and Tigers are keeping close tabs on Texas, in spite of a record one game over .500 heading into tonight’s game, which marks the two-thirds point of the season. A very good road team has suddenly become a force at home as well.
It’s Cole Hamels Day. Let’s go.