Starting tonight, Joey Matschulat of Sweet Spot blog Baseball Time in Arlington and I will start a multi-part preview of the Rays-Rangers ALDS matchup.
But, if you still have Rays fever and cannot wait, you should head over to the mothership and check out their incredibly cool series preview page. (Also, if you don’t know a lot about the Rangers, check out BBTIA, Joey has a lot of good stuff there.)
There is a ton of info on ESPN’s preview page including links to a scouting service full of so much data your head will spin.
Two cool things I noticed while eating my baby carrots:
- 8 out of the 10 experts picked the Rays (and 6 picked the Rays in 4). So that begs the question, Olney and Gomez, what gives?
- If you picked up any news source last week you read about how weak the Rays were offensively and about how great Texas is offensively. The Rays averaged 5.0 runs this season while the hard-hitting Rangers averaged 4.9.
The Rangers haven’t had their full lineup for most of the year, that’s probably why it doesn’t translate to runs a game. Think of it this way…
2. Young
3. Hamilton
4. Guerrero
5. Cruz
6. Kinsler
7. Murphy
Interesting. I guess that begs two follow up questions I don’t have time to look up at the moment:
1. How many games did this group play together and, during that time, did they score more than 4.9 runs per game?
2. Are all these guys healthy and ready for the ALDS?
By they way, thanks for stopping in.