Blue Jays 3, Rangers 2 and Rangers 3, Blue Jays 0: I Hope You Enjoy Crispness

Crafty lefties are maybe the best kind.

Neither the Blue Jays nor the Rangers are messing around this weekend, and that is what I like to see (something I also like to see: when everybody just messes around, so either way I'm good, really). Friday night, Brett Cecil got the best of the totally solid Alexi Ogando for the second time in less than a week, getting all the run support he needed from a J. P. Arencibia three-run home run in the bottom of the fifth. I'm not here to tell you that J. P. Arencibia is some kind of unstoppable juggernaut of a dude -- there is, after all, the .284 OBP to consider -- but he has been hot lately, and it is just straight-up factual that here we have a rookie who is leading all AL catchers in home runs with 17, and who trails only Carlos Santana (who is awesome) in extra-base hits. He's second only to the Angels' Mark Trumbo in rookie home runs, I hasten to add. I know the thinking is that Travis D'Arnaud is actually the top catching prospect in the system and probably has the higher ceiling; all I am saying here is that I am enjoying J. P. Arencibia as a rookie catcher with some power despite his .220 batting average. The only other thing I want to mention about Friday night, really is that Jon Rauch worked for the third straight night (to which: cheers!) and gave up a home run for the second straight night (to which: jeers, sadly). Oh yeah finally: both Bautista and Lind are turning in nifty plays at the corners of late, and that is rad!


The story of today's game was starting pitching. Brad Mills came up for the Blue Jays, and pitched admirably despite having what scouts like to call "fringey stuff," by which I think they mean that everything he throws has little shit fringes around it. This is a guy who puts pretty much nothing behind the ball, and to make matters better, he leaves it up in the zone like all the time. But hey: two runs on six hits over seven innings, that's awesome. Unfortunately for him, Derek Holland only needed 95 pitches to shut the Blue Jays out, the Rangers fourteenth of the season. These guys can pitch, and it would be neither surprising nor in any way awful to see them back in the World Series this year. I had a friend from Houston visiting all week, and when the subject of the Rangers came up, he just looked disgusted and scoffed, like "pppppppffffffffffffffff the Rangers" and I get where he is coming from on that, I really do, but I'm not there with him. 


Another feature of this weekend's series I am enjoying so far is that Michael Young has brought his "IRL Roger Dorn Fielding Shitshow" with him to Toronto, and it is an absolute joy to behold. The best is listening to the commentators try to make sense of it. "Uh, I guess he was battling the sun a little on that one? Uh, that was maybe a bit of a tricky hop? Uh, Young is really battling out there today." It's pretty much the best. Also I'm totally going to pretend this isn't just sour grapes over how the Blue Jays traded Young and his eventual 2000 hits away as part of the Esteban Loaiza deal a million years. 


KS

On the topic of Michael Young

So, in a case of dumb shit amplified by more dumb shit, Michael Young has demanded a trade because... the team was listening to trade offers for him and saying they weren't trying to trade him. If that sounds like bullshit, that's because it probably is.



Michael "Roger Dorn" Young still wants to play the field, despite the fact that he is absolutely terrible at it, and is butt hurt that the Rangers are trying to get better, in spite of his leadership and slap hitting skillz. How dare they pay him $16 fucking million a season for his sub-.700 OPS and dare ask him to not "play" third base anymore. Then, when they acquire Napoli who dares to play first base, one of the positions Young would be asked to suck at on a replacement status, and also hits lefties a lot better than the Statue... oh shit, you DID NOT JUST DISRESPECT THE FACE OF THE FRANCHISE LIKE THAT TEXAS RANGERS FRONT OFFICE. HOW DARE YOU!?


By the time you read this, Douche Face and his crotch adjustments might have been traded. Good riddance, Young. Truthfully, Young might do 50 million things good for the community, but this is strike three for me. He is dead to me. Strike one was when he and his sycophant, Evan Grant, who I actually enjoy reading when he's not pontificating on the greatness of Face, got CJ Wilson kicked off the Rangers blog I read for calling other MLBers douches. Boy, he was right on there! Strike two was two years ago, when he publicly bitched and whined about being moved off short for someone who can actually play the position. Then, weeks after demanding a trade, he realized no team was fucking stupid enough to take on his insane contract and he very privately withdrew the request, only to then be considered a "team player" for moving.


May he rot in hell.

Rangers Feelings

Usually, being a Rangers fan is not unlike constantly being kicked in the dick by fate. Fuck, prior to this year they were the only team in the league who had never even won a playoff series. The entire heights of my baseball fan life, prior to 2010, were Nolan Ryan punching the fuck out of Robin Ventura, and Game 1 vs. the Yankees, 1996.

Heading into 2010, the team was financially... fucked, after Tom "Blow Me Fuck Face Sr." Hicks, leveraged the Rangers and the Dallas Stars into buying another toy, Liverpool of the Premier League. When the economy keeled over and died, he defaulted on all of these leveraged loans, leaving the team in the hands of Bud fucking Selig and a bunch of creditors. The league found a group to buy the team, fronted by Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan, who sounded like they knew what the hell they were doing... but this shit drug OUT... and OUT... and OUT, until the team was finally put up for auction between this group, and Mark Cuban's group, which seemingly only wanted the TV rights.


Nolan and Chuck won, and I can only assume it's because Chuck has a colossal dong... well, at least colossal enough to impress Mrs. Ryan. By this time, the majority of the 2010 season had passed, and it wouldn't be unwise to think the team was suffering. Amazingly, however, this was not the case. In 2010, the Rangers basically made the AL West their prison bitch from day one, and proceeded to fuck the other teams in the ass when they wanted, and where they wanted. The team tore the league a new asshole through a particularly great stretch in June, and played well enough the rest of the time, that the playoffs weren't really in doubt. In preparation, the team went out and acquired several new core and not so core players. Guys like Bengie Molina, Jorge Cantu, Cristian Guzman, Jeff Francouer, and Cliff Lee.

Bengie Molina

With the team playing out of it's fucking mind, they march through the Rays and then through the motherfucking Yankees, striking out Alex Rodriguez to head to their first World Series. Legit, one of the best sports moments of my life. I fucking loved this team. Then, as luck tends to do, it ran out, and the team looked like shit in 5 games I never really want to relive against the San Francisco Giants.

Which leads to the offseason: A lot of faces head out, not so many head back in. The Rangers made it priority number one to resign Cliff Lee. Originally, it seemed as if the Yankees were just going to moneyfuck him and his bitch ass wife to New York. Then, after a big meeting at Lee's house in Arkansas, the Rangers appeared to be the front runners, and I'm fully prepared to be just fucking ecstatic about it, even if the contract ended up being really stupid. However, in the 23rd fucking hour, he runs off to play second, or third, or fuck, maybe even fourth fiddle with the fucking Phillies. It's like finding out this chick you're trying to fuck called up her ex boyfriend, who'd moved on a year ago, offered to blow him in the back of a car, and now lives in a communal groupfuck with him and the new bitch. Just not right if you ask me.

So the Rangers counter the loss of a Cy Young winner with the gain of another, when they sign one-armed Brandon Webb to an incentive-laden deal, fresh off of reports that his heat was in the low 80s. I'm excited. Of course, he ended up not being the big fish. Adrian Beltre and his super sensitive head did.


The biggest plus for the Rangers, beyond how much fun Andres Blanco, David Murphy, and the other jokers on the team are going to have fucking with Beltre's head, is that Michael motherfucking Young, the Roger Dorn of modern day MLB, will be moved off of third base, where he would regularly dive at routine plays that just happened to fall out of his reach, making "past a diving Michael Young..." a meme on Rangers fan sites, and to the motherfucking bench where he will DH. What was merely a local joke became an international one in the ALCS, when upon a hard hit ball by Alex Rodriguez, Young moved OUT OF THE WAY OF THE BALL and then attempted to "Ole!" it. Sit your ass on the pine, face of the franchise.

Well, there were some Rangers feelings, I guess. Whenever the hell I decide to write again, it will probably be a season preview or something.