Central Track Editor’s Note: Welcome to Rangers Revolver, a new Central Track feature that will pop up repeatedly throughout the baseball season and will take a closer look at some of the more pressing issues facing Your Texas Rangers. Each time we do this, we’ll load our chamber and fire off six notable bullets worthy of your consideration.
• The Rangers’ hottest hitter in the last seven days is David Murphy (.289), who has seven hits and as many RBIs in 11 at-bats. The left-hander drove in five of those runs in a stellar game versus the Detroit Tigers last week, in a series that saw the Rangers beat the Tigers with authority in two of three games. Well, except for American League All-Star Prince Fielder, who did pretty well. We’re fairly convinced he may actually be the Buddha.
• The Rangers have locked up three players in the starting lineup for the AL All-Stars team this year: catcher Mike Napoli, third basemen Adrian Beltre and outfielder Josh Hamilton, who received a record 11,073,744 votes in fan balloting.
• In spite of a two-game skid, the Rangers still hold the best win-loss record in the majors (50-32). They reached their 50th win against the Oakland A’s on a solid first-ever appearance start by pitcher Martin Perez (1-0), and did so at the quickest pace in franchise history.
• Thankfully, the Rangers have roster depth or else their pitching situation might be more cause for concern than it already is, what with six of their best men in the rotation currently sitting on the disabled list. Currently, imported rookie star Yu Darvish (10-5) leads in the polling for the last spot on the American League All-Star team. If he were to land that final spot, he would become just the second Japanese starting pitcher to appear in the game afterHideo Nomo did so in 1995 for the Dodgers.
• Here’s a fun fact: Rangers manager and the American League All-Stars skipper Ron Washington replaced Cal Ripken, Jr. in the lineup for the Baltimore Orioles to end Ripken’s 8,243 innings played streak. It was one of two notable streaks for baseball’s Iron Man, who also played a record 2,632 consecutive games.
• The Rangers only made two transactions in the last week, placing RHP Mark Lowe on the 15-day DL, and recalling their side-armed reliever Yoshinori Tateyama from triple-A Round Rock.