My Texas Rangers have come unglued.
This team, which was in first place in the division within the past month, has suddenly decided to forget how to win, how to gut it out, and how to scrape and claw their way back into games that they get down early in. One of the joys of watching last year's team was knowing that they never considered themselves out of any game.
But the team playing in Arlington today can hardly be confused with that vibrant 2004 team. The 2005 Rangers are a team with clubhouse chaos written all over them, and it isn't hard to figure out when it all started.
Ryan Drese, who's stellar coming out season last year earned him the ball on opening day this year, had failed to live up to his hype. It was a grueling, difficult first two months of the season for Ryan, and that frustration came to a head when he and catcher Rod Barajas got into a fight in the dugout in the middle of a game. Kenny Rogers blocked the dugout cameras with his body, but the scuffle was taped and seen. "A couple of guys in the heat of a game letting their emotions get the better of them" said Buck Showalter the next day. This was no big deal, according to the Ranger's skipper.
Two weeks later, Ryan Drese was outrighted to AAA, but failed to clear waivers and was picked up by the Washington Nationals.
It was drastic, and viewed through the prism of the dugout fight, you had to wonder about the reasoning behind it, especially considering that there weren't that many bodies in the background to pitch in Drese's place. So a week later, when Pedro Astascio was released in the same manner, suddenly the Ranger's starting rotation, which up to that point had at least seemed manageable, though in no way dominant, was empty.
But last year it was the same thing. The Rangers, over the course of the 2004 season, walked 20+ different starting pitchers to the mound. But THAT team hadn't had the life sucked out of it. THAT team believed in themselves. This team doesn't appear to harbor those thoughts anymore.
It's a failure of the GM, it's a failure of the owner, and it's a failure of the manager. This team doesn't trust Buck Showalter anymore. This team doesn't believe that he's got their backs -- against the media or the owners. This team has just basically eliminated themselves from any chance at the division title.
This team will find itself in the cellar, and when they do, they need to consider themselves sellers in the market. Kenny Rogers, Alfonso Soriano, Adrian Gonzales: Your time has come. This team is about to make, yet another, change in philosophy.
UPDATE: As if you didn't need further proof of the "great chemistry" in the clubhouse of last year turning into a chemistry experiment gone bad, there came this tonight.
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