Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 09:23:26 -0500
Reply-To: Discussion of Texas Rangers Major League Baseball Team <RANGERS@TAMU.EDU>
Sender: Discussion of Texas Rangers Major League Baseball Team <RANGERS@TAMU.EDU>
From: Beau Sharbrough <beau@CONNECT.NET>
Subject: The sky is falling

... or at least that's what it sounds like to me....

Hello to the list, and anyone who gets this note by mistake.

The recent scurry of little feet to jump off the Rangers' bandwagon over starting pitchers seems premature to me.

1. It's only May.
2 All three of the suspect starters have had a few good games.
3. We have a lot of pitching in OKC but it's not any better than what we've got here.

That Perisho kid we got for Hill gave up 5 runs in six innings last night. I don't think that he's going to handcuff the AL next week. I haven't seen anyone but Moody and Levine that I think can pitch up here. I'm tempted to give Al Levine the long relief job until Pavlik can take it back. Al went 4-2/3 last night, looked great. Less filling. Looked great. Less filling....

4. Helling hasn't looked so good since his 130 something outing.

During the 8 run whipping of a third inning last night, Oliver was making some very good pitches. Tatis missed two chances to end the inning, too. I'm not ready to abandon Tatis or Oliver.

5. We won 6 straight before losing these last two.
6. We're about to get to play somebody other than the Red Sox, Yankees, and Indians.
7. (GaryC, please skip this item) The Orioles have the biggest payroll in the history of the game and they're dead last in their division behind an expansion team. You think you got troubles?

I heard last night that the Orioles will back up the truck really soon, and start dumping stars like the Marlins did. That will create opportunities for the Rangers. I don't think that they'll take expensive Orioles players, and I don't think that the O's will part with any pitching. All the same, if you move Alomar and Raffy, it moves two other people somewhere else, and so it
goes....

8. Nobody is going to give us a good pitcher this year. That includes Oakland and Kenny Rogers. They have plenty of offense, they are hurting for pitching, and he's all they've got. It's fun to speculate about him coming back, but it won't be during this season.

Take heart, Rangers fans! We will probably lose 40 or 50 more games, and stink to high heaven for weeks at a time! Not only that, but some players will go into slumps for a month at a time.

Burkett has a way of pitching 7 perfect innings and then pitching 7 perfectly lousy starts. He's too smart to fight that long, he'll come around. Oliver has some terrific stuff, and he's STILL young for a pitcher. We'd like to break even on their starts. Witt is the number 5 guy, he'll soak up innings, and if you go five under 500 for his starts, it's probably not bad. You might even go 10 under. We're going to be between 20 and 30 over on the starts for Helling and Sele, if the present trend continues. We'd end up with about 90 or 92 wins, and that should win the west. Two guys can get you all the way to the World Series Championship.

Important note:

I'm not suggesting that we end the discussion wherein we roast the guys who do the worst. It's a lot of fun and I'm all for piling on a guy when he's down since he'll never know about it.

--
Beau Sharbrough      | GENTECH99, Salt Lake City, 22-23 Jan 99
Grapevine, Texas     |
<beau@connect.net>   | Keep gambling out of the game, and
www.connect.net/beau | keep Rose and Jackson out of the Hall.