ARLINGTON, Texas — The start to the second half was stacked with first place teams for the Texas Rangers (60-43, 1st Place AL West), and the team immediately behind them in the standings. Consider it a grueling stretch of both joyous and difficult baseball, highlighted by sweeps of both the Cleveland Guardians and Tampa Bay Rays, followed by two series losses to the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros.
Still, Texas ended this stretch against immediately competitive teams on a high note, routing the Astros in an emotionally charged game that showed that the Silver Boot Series was alive and well in Texas.
The Rangers now look to close out the roller coaster month of July with a brief trip out west to beautiful Petco Park to face a team that has vastly underperformed all expectations, which represents a challenge to not overlook a talented opponent.
San Diego’s journey
On paper, the San Diego Padres (49-54, 4th Place NL West) should be World Series contenders. Deploying a star-studded lineup that features Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis, Jr., Juan Soto, and Xander Bogaerts, the Padres should be among the best in the league. With a rotation that features Blake Snell, Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove and an All-Star closer in Josh Hader, the Padres should be a consistently tough team to handle.
The games aren’t played on paper though.
The Padres’ lineup has been lackluster at best. While the story going into the season was about how Tatis, Jr. would perform after serving an 80-game suspension, the story quickly turned into what was going on with the bats as a whole. Machado, in his 5th season of 15 with San Diego has tailed off considerably from last season. 2022 was a year in which Machado finished 2nd place in the NL MVP Voting, slashing .298/.366/.531 with 32 homers and 102 RBI. This season, Machado is slashing .257/.316/.472 with 20 homers and 59 RBI.
Xander Bogaerts, in the first of an eleven-year deal, has looked like anything but the All-Star shortstop that made him so beloved in Boston. While not a terrible line, Bogaerts’ .265/.349/.402 mark is a sharp drop from his previous All-Star and MVP candidate seasons. He’s been dealing with a wrist issue, receiving an injection over the All-Star break to help mitigate the pain, but Bogaerts isn’t the type of player to let that be an excuse for performance.
Juan Soto and Tatis, Jr., meanwhile, have been strong performers for the Padres, with Soto getting on-base at an over 40% clip, nearing 100 walks and 60 runs scored. Tatis, starting his season a little under a month late due to his suspension for taking a performance enhancing drug, has been hitting well, slashing .277/.337/.497, nearing 100 hits.
Collectively, the Padres’ offense just hasn’t produced as expected. They’re right in the middle of the league in terms of runs scored and near the bottom third of the league in hits.
The unexpected mediocre offense hasn’t done enough to support a pitching staff and rotation that is one of the best in baseball. The Padres’ rotation is the best in the National League in terms of ERA, sitting at 3.75 with 240 runs allowed.
Their starters also rank second in the NL in innings pitched at 556 ⅓ , showing that they go deep into their games. A combination of a strong pitching staff and an uncoordinated offense leads to what the Padres were at the All-Star break – a slightly below .500 team at 43-47 and that has only gotten worse in the first few weeks out of the break.
Because of that, the Padres are in the unfortunate position of trying to be both buyers and sellers, and their ultimate decision might come down to how they perform in this series against Texas which adds a layer of intensity that the Rangers would surely like to avoid.
If they buy, and add offensive pieces to help them score runs, they could squeak into a Wild Card spot and take their chances. The problem is, several of their key pitchers – namely Snell, Hader, and Seth Lugo – are set to be free agents, meaning they could have nothing to show for going for it if they can’t make up the 6.5 games that they trail for the final playoff spot.
The matchups
Game 104: 8:40 PM CT - RHP Dane Dunning (8-3, 3.18 ERA) vs. RHP Joe Musgrove (9-3, 3.25 ERA)
Game 105: 7:40 PM CT - LHP Martin Perez (8-3, 4.91 ERA) vs. RHP Yu Darvish (7-7, 4.80 ERA)
Game 106: 3:10 PM CT - TBD vs. LHP Blake Snell (7-8, 2.61 ERA)
The first game of this AL/NL West matchup pits two evenly matched pitchers against each other. Dane Dunning will go for Texas, while Joe Musgrove goes for the Padres. Dunning, who had his worst outing of the season against the Dodgers last time out, started out pitching like an ace through the first two months of the year, stumbled a bit through June and has had an up and down July.
Musgrove, on the other hand, had some troubles out of the gate but has leveled out and turned into his usual trustworthy starting pitcher. Last time out against Detroit, Musgrove pitched six innings and gave up three runs while striking out six.
The second game sees former Rangers ace Yu Darvish go head-to-head with Martin Perez. Perez last pitched in the finale against the Dodgers where he struggled through a four-run 1st inning before buckling down and grinding through six innings to earn the win.
Darvish, meanwhile, has not had a very clean season, only having two scoreless outings all year. Darvish has always battled high walk rates and pitch counts, a product of the movement of his pitches, but his other pitches have also seen a dip in velocity. The now-36-year old righty, who was highly under-appreciated during his best years in Texas, had his shortest and worst outing of the season against Pittsburgh. Darvish only went 4 ⅓ innings and gave up seven runs, including three walks and four home runs.
Even though the Sunday starter is listed as TBD, it stands to reason that the finale would see Nathan Eovaldi take the hill for the Rangers to face Snell. Eovaldi was skipped for his turn in the Astros series, as the Rangers ended up using a bullpen game against their in-state foes. Eovaldi’s last start was against the Rays back on July 18, a 2-hit, scoreless gem that earned him his 11th win. However, in that start, Eovaldi’s velocity was way down after several weeks of diminishing stuff, so the team decided to rest him to restore some of that arm strength.
Snell could very well be making his last appearance for the Padres, as he represents one of the big names on the trade market. Snell, who wasn’t great to start the year, has been remarkable since the end of May. Since May 25th, Snell has given up just six runs in 12 games, including three straight scoreless starts to begin July. The Rangers are likely one of the teams interested in Snell’s services. Perhaps he ends up boarding the plane back to Arlington with the Rangers.
While San Diego hasn’t been the powerhouse that Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Los Angeles or Houston have been in the standings at least, the Rangers are going to have a tough time against their pitching staff. With Corey Seager out of the lineup and with Jonah Heim a mystery following an early exit with a sore wrist in the finale against Houston, it could be tough sledding. If the offensive breakout and hard-hit balls from the Houston series wasn’t just a product of adrenal strength against a rival, this series could be a case of the immovable object versus the unstoppable force.
The Rangers could also look different by the time this series in California concludes. The “TBD” might not be Eovaldi, but could be an incoming pitcher from a trade. The trade deadline is Monday, a day the Rangers happen to have off but first they must navigate through an unusually downtrodden Padres squad.
Do you think the Rangers will finish off July with a series win in San Diego? Share your predictions with Matt on Twitter @FisherWritesMLB.