Imagining things.
It’s rained a ton this holiday weekend, wiping out lots of youth baseball and other outdoor plans but holding off long enough for Texas to get in three against Pittsburgh and win the majority of them.
Helped along by Yu Darvish and Jurickson Profar, teammates for the first time in two and a half years.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way.
One finished 2012 in the top 10 in both Rookie of the Year and Cy Young voting, the other as baseball’s best prospect.
They occupied the Rangers’ starting nine together 13 times in 2013.
And three times in May.
May 2016.
Twice in Round Rock.
And then, here, on Saturday night.
It was a night on which Darvish and Profar reminded us of visions every one of us had four years ago, and three.
The big righthander, returning from an elbow injury that wiped out a year and two thirds, won his fourth season debut out of four. The command was there and the velocity was shockingly there, and the strikeout-to-walk was better for Darvish than it often is. It was a dazzling reminder of what we’ve missed and, just as much, a taste of the kind of boost his return should give this already strong club.
The 23-year-old infielder singled in the first (on an 0-2 count) from the leadoff spot, and scored. He grounded out his next two times up (seeing eight pitches), and then tripled and scored in the seventh. He saw 11 strikes in 12 pitches — watching four, fouling off three, and putting four in play — never swinging and missing (or looking at strike three). He made all the plays at second base.
The 2014 season, a terrible one for the team, started badly for Profar and ended badly for Darvish.
Neither of them was able to contribute to the Rangers’ fantastic 2015 season. What if they had?
As for 2016, for different reasons, their arrivals were delayed until late May.
It’s probably going to be short lived for Profar.
But so far, he’s 5 for 13 (.385/.385/538) with more multi-hit games (two) than strikeouts (one), and he’s found a way to score three times in three games.
Leadoff hitters do that.
I’ve been saying for a couple months that he’s the guy in the system I’d most like to see atop this lineup long term — the tricky part is finding the place he fits defensively, less so because of his abilities than because of who is already in place.
Profar has started nine big league games in the leadoff spot. He’s hit safely in all nine, and is a .310/.341/.476 hitter in that role, markedly better than in any other spot in the lineup (second, sixth, seventh, eighth, or ninth).
If nothing else, Jurickson Profar is helping his own stock, and that’s a very good thing, no matter where this is headed.
Profar is a winning player.
That’s not to say Rougned Odor and Elvis Andrus are not. They are.
But so is Profar.
Gallo returned to Round Rock as Darvish arrived, and made his third pro start at first base on Sunday. (The first was last August. The second was his final day with the Express before being recalled a week ago to temporarily fortify the big league bench.)
He drew two walks in yesterday’s game, once leading off an inning and another time with the bases loaded, and in each case that’s a really promising thing for a guy with Gallo’s profile, another demonstration of a huge step forward in approach and a tempering of what had to be an urge to be big in a situation that didn’t necessarily call for it. He singled in his third chance, before fanning and flying out.
Think back to the hitter you saw last summer, when he struck out 57 times in 123 big league plate appearances and drew a dozen unintentional walks — with 90 more whiffs against 25 unintentional walks in the 128 AAA trips that followed his promotion to Texas.
He’s walked 24 times (22 times unintentionally) and gone down on strikes 25 times in 111 AAA plate appearances this spring.
Gallo has nearly cut his strikeout rate in half.
And nearly doubled his walk rate.
While playing first base, on a day that the struggling Prince Fielder and Mitch Moreland each homered. (Off a lefty. In the same game. In the same inning.)
Unrelated.
Gallo will probably continue to see AAA time at third base (as he’s the player Texas would turn to if Adrian Beltre needed to be deactivated) and maybe some on one outfield corner or the other as well. He’s DH’ing today.
But he’s going to play a good amount of first base as well, and with Moreland a free agent at season’s end, there’s added meaning to Gallo’s defensive assignments at this point, if not for 2016 then certainly beyond — especially with Beltre now locked in for another couple years.
There hasn’t yet been a day when Darvish and Profar and Gallo were all here.
Or anywhere, as Gallo was on the DL when Darvish made his two AAA rehab appearances early this month.
In fact, Gallo has suited up just once in 2016 in Texas with either one, when Profar made his season debut on Friday and Gallo remained on the bench in a 9-1 loss to the Pirates.
There’s a chance they’ll never play together. Profar could be back in AAA with Gallo once Odor is reactivated, and Profar (or even Gallo) could be traded in July.
If not, they’ll all be here in September, if not sooner — and I wouldn’t rule out the possibility, all things considered, that they’re all on a 2016 post-season roster together, when Profar in particular (with the minor league season over) could give Texas weapons on the bench that Hanser Alberto can’t.
Next year? Too soon to guess. Far too soon.
But not too soon to imagine it, and — finally — the vision isn’t entirely imaginary.