Texas Rangers option Jake Burger to AAA, call up Blaine Crim in dramatic move to spark dead offense

Texas Rangers option Jake Burger to AAA, call up Blaine Crim in dramatic move to spark dead offense

If this isn’t rock bottom, then dear God, am I terrified of what might be. You are Locked on Rangers, your daily Texas Rangers podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. You are locked on to the Texas Rangers. I’m Bryce Patrick, a crippingly addicted Texas Rangers fan, covering this team for 12 seasons, including all seven as the fatter host of this podcast. You know what? I’m so mad at this stupid baseball team, I don’t even want to do the rest of this intro. It doesn’t feel like it deserves it. I just want to yell about how mad I am about the worst offensive performance I’ve ever seen in a baseball game. This was horrifying to watch. Absolutely horrifying. I recorded a show just felt like a couple hours before the game because it was just a couple hours before the game saying, “Hey, if you can’t get right against Jeffrey freaking springs with a six erra who just got his brains beat out by the 2025 Chicago White Socks. What can write the ship? What? What can write the ship? You had 15 runs earlier this week and outside of that, you ain’t done squat. Oh, Cory Siger’s coming back on Saturday. That’s nice. He’s not going to fix this offense. This was just horrible from a guy who had been horrible all season long. They made him look like freaking Sandy Kofax. He was not throwing good pitches. He looked bad. The Rangers made his line look good. He was not making quality pitches. He went six innings. He only needed about five and a half pitches per inning to get through it. It was a little bit more than that. 68 pitches. Only 45 of those were strike, but he still made it through six innings. And he only walked one. He only struck out one. They only got two hits, a couple of singles that felt like miracles with this team. By some wild chance, they had some opportunities with runners in scoring position just despite having the most inept offense I’ve ever seen in a baseball game. And they went, of course, 0 for four and found a way to leave every one of their five runners on base that they had in this entire game. Once Tyler Mali led in that one run in the top of the first inning, by the way, the only run that he led in, it was brilliant yet again, unsurprisingly, I knew it was over. That was an insurmountable lead with how awful this offense has been. There have been pitches right down the middle that they just take or they foul out or they pop up. It’s just weak contact over and over and over and over again. I mean, the Rangers got three hits. They had a 178 expected batting average. They were not expected to do much. And honestly, the 178 expected batting average feels generous with how horrific this offense looked. Heck, that was buoyed by, you know, a couple of near hits, but Josh Young’s flyyou in the ninth inning and and Jonah’s line out in the ninth inning. Josh Young’s had a 560 expected batting average and Jonah had a 360. Um, and Marcus’ swing and a miss to end the game on a pitch in the other batters box is just kind of par for the freaking course. I mean, this offense just freaking sucks. It should be a lot better than this. Everybody in this lineup should be a lot better than this, but they’re not. And it’s been a month. And I don’t know how or what or where the Rangers got themselves cursed by some kind of sea witch who stole their ability to hit baseballs. Whatever deal they made with Ursula, go undo it. Go undo it. Stop doing it. Everybody in this lineup should be hitting at least confidently. But somehow collectively every bat on this roster is just in the midst of a career worst funk at the exact same time. I don’t know how that happens for a month. A month. I don’t know what they’re saying in the hitters meetings, but it’s not working. I don’t know what they’re saying when they are in the dugouts in between at bats, but it’s not working. I don’t know what Bruce Bochi is is telling them, but it’s not working. Something dramatic needs to happen, and it needs to happen now. Whether that’s a firing, whether they just cut a player outright, whether they beat a pinata in the in the in the locker room, I I don’t know. You going to sacrifice a goat in the hitters meeting? I You gonna burn something? You gonna blow something up? I You got to do something. at this point because this should be a good team. This pitching staff is honestly really really good. Jacob Deg Grom looks impeccable. Nathan Yoli last night, incredible today. Tyler Mali looked really darn good. And it doesn’t matter. This team is 504th place in the ALS. Just six days ago, they were at the top of it. They were cruising. Everything looked me good enough. This offense was bad, but not horrifyingly bad. And I just don’t know what to do anymore. I have no new things to say about this team other than it just sucks. It is infuriating to watch this baseball team. It is detrimental to me, to my career, to my well-being, my livelihood. The way I make my money is saying you shouldn’t care about this team. But honestly, right now, you shouldn’t. They are infuriating to watch. And nothing’s different. Nothing’s new. Nobody’s fired up. They’re making boneheaded, stupid plays that they’ve never made before. Marcus Simeon forgetting how many outs there are and getting double off on a routine fly out because he was couldn’t get back to first base because he didn’t know how many outs there were. That’s your team captain. That’s your guy who never has mental errors. If he’s doing stupid stuff like that, what hope do the rest of them have? I just I am so infuriated and beyond done with this team. It’s just stupid. It’s just bad. It’s just the same dang thing every freaking day. That’s why I got so excited when they scored 50 rounds. I thought, “Okay, you guys did remember how to hit. Occasionally, it is possible for y’all to get a hit with Ryers in scoring position to drive in some runs. They haven’t hit a home run in over a week.” Over a week. It’s awful. This team stinks right now. And I don’t know why they seem to be taking it so easy. I’m sure they’re not, but just give me something. I know internally each one of these guys cared. I’m not going to ever question that. I I’ll question the results for sure. The results poo. The process poo. I’m not going to question whether these guys care or not. They obviously do. But I I’d like to see this team that has been built as baseball robots, which it worked really really well in 2023. Hey, don’t get too high, don’t get too low in that roller coaster ride. That’s fine. But now they could use some urgency. They could use somebody standing up in a hitters meeting and throwing a chair through a window, getting in a fight, punching somebody, screaming in somebody’s face, doing something dramatic because the same thing every freaking day is not working at all. I don’t know what you do about it, but it’s got to be something and it’s got to be now. It is well past time. Losing this series to the A’s like this when your bats look this helpless, this all in their head. I mean, it is painful. And there was a shot after an Adulus Garcia out of him in the dugout of him just holding his face. You could see the pains on his face. This man wants nothing more than to just hit a thousand dingers in one game and fix everything in one moment. These guys care so much. But it just seeing them like this time and time and time again, it just makes me want to bash my head through a window. It is unpleasant. Deeply unpleasant watching this baseball team suck the same way every freaking game. Oh my goodness. I don’t want to hear talk about, oh, the Rangers need a real closer. Oh, the Rangers need a better five-star. Oh, they need a deeper bullpen. No, the the rotation, the pitching, you sweet, beautiful boys, you’ve done nothing wrong outside of the couple of things you’ve done wrong. But for the most part, this pitching staff has been exceptional. And the hitting has been so atrocious that I feel like every single hitter in this lineup, every single hitting coach in in this dugout, it needs to write personal apologies to every single pitcher and pitching coach on this roster. Because while the pitchers may not be absolutely perfect every single day, this offense is so horrifyingly, mind-numbingly body and soul crushingly bad that it feels like I also and you, dear viewer, for watching this deserve personal handwritten apology notes because my goodness does it freaking stink right now. This show is brought to you by Fire TV. Did you know your Fire TV isn’t also an Xbox? 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Head to amazon.com/firetv locked on to get started. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription and compatible controller required. Available on select devices including Fire TV Stick 4K second gen, Fire TV Stick 4K Max first and second gen, and Fire TV Cube third gen. Shout out to everyday for making Lockdown Range your first listen every single day. If you’re if you’re listening to this one, oh boy, you must be a real sicko. And I I am glad that I can be here with you in this mess, in this madness to let you know that this this is very upsetting for everybody. Now, of course, Chris Young did this in the middle of me recording my episode, but uh there’s some big breaking news that uh you may be wondering why I haven’t addressed yet. It’s because uh I hadn’t seen it yet while I was recording this. I had to go in record this thing separately. But Blaine Crim is coming up. Jake Ber’s going down. I talked about it all week that Jake Berger’s been hitting horribly. He’s one of the few regulars that’s been horrible in this offense that that still has some minor league options left. He has one. This is it. He’s going down. The Rangers are doing something dramatic. They’re going to be some 40man roster moves to to make this move happen to get Blaine Crim up here, but it’s time. It’s time. It it it was pastime, especially after this last game. It’s not just a oneame reaction. I mean, right now, after this game, this was from Kennedy Landry, the Rangers offense at the conclusion of today’s game scoring 3.22 runs per game. That’s with the 15 run outburst. That’s 29th best in baseball. League average is 4.33. Their walk percentage 6.6. League average is 9%. They are 29th in all of baseball. On base percentage 289, league average is 316. They’re 28th in all of baseball. Heck, plate appearances with runners on base even. They aren’t even getting people on base to have these opportunities to get these rallies going. They only have 424 and they are uh 29th in baseball with that and with uh plate appearances with runners in scoring position. Also, they are just they’re bad. This is a dramatic move. The Rangers needed something dramatic, some new fresh face, something to go on. And you know, credit to Bla Crim. He’s been hitting. This is a man from Mobile, Alabama, who he hits. What position does he play? He hits. He plays first base. He’s got a third baseman’s glove on him. I I I hope that we don’t see him at third base defensively, but the man hits. He works a walk. He’ll strike out a little bit. He’s got some real pop. He is the prototypical first base/DH type. And the Rangers need any kind of offensive injection and explosion. And Bla Crim’s been hitting pretty darn well. He hasn’t been hitting incredibly. He hasn’t been, you know, untouchable. It hasn’t been a point where, you know, offensively, you look at his numbers and think, “Oh my gosh, how can they possibly keep him down?” No. And the the jump, the gap between Triple A and the big leagues right now, it is the Grand Canyon. It is huge. But the Rangers just needed something to kind of spark this offense. and sending a guy down to the minor leagues who the last couple years has combined for more than 60 home runs. That’s a sign that hey, no one here is untouchable. Figure it out. This offense needs some kind of injection and uh this this is the move and I I don’t know if it’ll be the last. Now, back to your reg regularly scheduled pre-B Blaine Crim News rant. I don’t know. I I’ve been doing the same freaking show it feels like for the last I don’t know 15 months cuz every almost every show I do this year outside of the one after they scored 15 runs I thought okay this offense is bad there’s some good hitters in it should be better but they’re not right now but they’ll get there and then all of last year happened and they never got there and here we are this year It’s been a month of me saying, “Hey, wow, this pitching staff has been really darn good.” That was at least a little different than last year. Last year it wasn’t, “Oh, wow. The pitching staff’s incredible. Just wait till this offense gets going.” No, no. The pitching staff was was fine to pretty good at points, but mostly just fine last year. This year, it’s really darn good. I mean, every pitcher on this roster, for the most part, they’ve done their jobs. from Jacob Grom to Caleb Bosley, they have done their jobs. This offense just hasn’t. And what was really infuriating for me, the the most infuriating moment, well, there there’s a lot of moments to choose from. I mean, Josh Smith pinch hitting and and striking out and the one good chance that the Rangers had that that felt not great. Uh Tucker Barnhard getting called out on strike three on a pitch that was several inches out of the zone. That was deeply infuriating because he worked a good at bat. You know, credit to Ducker Barnhart who is not exactly an offensive juggernaut of a player, but he worked a good at bat and he should have had at least one more pitch to work with. But for me, it was that the offense looked listless and lifeless and and that was a prime moment. That one right there would have been a prime moment for Bruce Bochi to get thrown out of this game to go in there and let the umpire have it. Let somebody have it. Let some frustrations out on somebody. Go scream it in his face. It was a wrong call. He was well within his rights to do that. But just do something. Kick over a chair. Punt a puppy off a bridge. I don’t know. Maybe don’t maybe don’t do that. Maybe just uh maybe that was not the right Anchorman reference for that moment. But do something, Bruce. Do something. You’ve done some dramatic lineup changes. That hasn’t worked. You’ve done done it again. It didn’t work. Then it kind of worked and then it very much hasn’t worked the last couple of games. I just I don’t know. the the only guys who really have that fire to step up in a hitter meeting and throw something and break a bat. I’d do something dramatic are two of the guys that are in the worst of it right now is Jack Peterson who’s definitely got that juice to be a vocal leader, to be a guy to energize and a locker room and and bring the vibes. And he’s been awful. It’s it’s hard to bring vibes when your own vibes are terrible because you’ve been in the worst slump of your career. That 0 for 41 kid, he’s pulling out of it. He’s looking better. He’s been robbed by a couple of pretty good at bats, including one yesterday that should have at least tied the game. It It didn’t because the A’s defense is somehow incredible. Somehow, I guess the A’s are good. You move them out of Oakland and I guess John Fitcher gets to have nice things. It feels unfair watching this team that has been systematically gutted go and play better than this Rangers team who has been built intentionally and been given resources and have been you know successful and won a World Series not that long ago. Basically this same lineup that was unstoppable is very very stoppable right now. I mean, something dramatic really needs to sh needs to shift right now. There needs to be somebody whose head is put on a spike. Metaphorically speaking, nobody’s actual head needs to be put on a spike. It’s just baseball. It’s not It’s not that dramatic. It feels that dramatic at times, and I’m sure it feels that dramatic for them, but I I don’t know who it is. Leot Diver feels like the the very obvious candidate, but heck, this game’s not on him. He didn’t play. He didn’t play this game. This game isn’t his fault. Heck, the last game that he he played in, he had a hit. Maybe he also had a walk. He had a three hit game in in that win where it felt like everything was finally going right. He’s had some pretty bad moments and overall the Rangers would be it seems like they’ve mostly moved on from Leodyis, but it feels like it’s Evan Carter time. It feels like it’s it’s Kell Stum time. It feels like Jake Burger is going to be optioned here before long and and give Blaine Crim a shot because why the heck not? How much worse could it get? It it truly how much worse could this offense be? I don’t know. I don’t think much really. Truly, I don’t think much cuz this is about as inept an offensive series as I’ve ever seen and they scored 15 runs in one of these games. Still, this is one of the most inept offensive series I have ever seen. This game just especially what what was the game plan? It felt like it felt like there was none. I I don’t I don’t know. I don’t I truly don’t know. It feels like the Rangers need to part ways with their hitting coaches cuz it might not be their faults, but they’re not helping. Nobody’s really helping in this one. Heck, even the last couple game, even in this series, Wyatt Langford hasn’t looked that great. He was the one guy who was hitting for anything. We’ve seen some multi-hit games from Marcus Sim. We’ve seen the multihit games from from Josh. It’s just they can get these runners on base, but the second they get there, it’s like they’re swinging a freaking popsicle stick. I I don’t I don’t have any answers. And neither do they. And I really wish they did because while it’s absolutely maddening to watch this team score what a combined what was it? Two runs in the three of the games in this series. I believe it was two runs. Maybe it was four. It wasn’t many. Definitely wasn’t more than than two in any of these games outside of the the big explosion that it feels like the most headscratching moment. It feels almost more head scratching. It’s how this team was one of the best offenses in baseball and and so incredibly deep and so unstoppable in 2023. I It’s the same guys and they’re not impossibly old. They’re not losing their athleticism. They’re not that over the hill. So, what the heck is it? What is going on here? I It is the most confusing thing I’ve seen in a lot of baseball watching. This team should just just do the thing. Just do do it. Just do it. I don’t know. Take a Nike commercial. Just hit the freaking baseball over the fence. Hit it hard. Hit it good. Just stop hitting it bad. Just Okay. I’m beyond my expertise, my functional knowledge of how baseball works. I have no stat for you. I have no deep dive insight. I have no, oh, this one thing. Doctors hate him. This one thing could fix the Rangers lineup and hitting coaches hate him. What What is this one thing that can fix it? There’s not There’s not one thing. The vibes are in the trash can. Everything feels like a bunch of garbage poo. And this was one of the worst offensive series I’ve ever seen. I I don’t know what fixes it. And it’s it’s not going to get better soon. I I don’t I really don’t think it is. And this weekend against the Mariners in a crucial series is coming up. And this team is just about to get their doors blown off. Thank you for listening to Log Rangers every single day. If you are an everydayer, God bless you for for sticking through it through the madness and the and the mayhem and the me being cranky. I don’t like yelling at this baseball team and being mad online. You can write in the newspapers that I’m mad. They they they should know. Someone should know. I’m sure they did write in the newspapers that that Bryce Patrick got mad online. Actually, I don’t I don’t think they did write that in newspapers, but I’m sure they wrote the Rangers fans mad online, mad IRL, mad in real life for those of you who are not up with the hip and happening uh phraseology in this one. But what’s incredibly frustrating is watching this team because it’d be easy to say, “Hey, this team, every part of this team is just sucks and it’s broken and there’s no good there and just throw it all in the trash can and be done with it.” And that’s not the case. That’s not true. There are parts of this team that are really dang good. Tyler Mali especially, the man has a 119 ERA this season. A 119. He’s been fantastic. I completely written him off in spring training. I thought this guy’s washed. This guy may not come back from Tommy John surgery. This guy just doesn’t look like he has it. And especially after that first start where he didn’t even make it through two innings. You thought, “All right, well, this is going to be rough. There’s no John Gray for two months of the season. There’s no Cody Bradford for the first two months of the season.” You have injuries to Lighter and to Rocker. Lighter who missed over three weeks with a blister that initially was was thought maybe he’d be making his next start. That was very much not the case. Rocker is hopefully just going to be down for those 15 days and then they could make a decision. But honestly, it doesn’t feel like it much matters at this point who’s in the rotation, who’s in the bullpen. If this offense can’t score any runs, this is not soccer. You cannot draw. You cannot scoured a point at a nil nil draw, a hard-fought nil nil draw, have clean sheets. They don’t matter if you can’t score a run because again when the two leaders of your team, Marcus Simeon and Cory Seager are not vocal leaders or the hitters on this team that are the most equipped to be vocal leaders are are hitting horribly. It’s hard to listen to them. Hard for their message to sink in as well when they’re playing horribly. If if it was Wyatt Langford that was the veteran who has been the only guy who’s been hitting very very well could step up and say, “Hey guys, I’m working my freaking butt off. Can y’all just get on base, do offense better? It might carry some weight if Jo was hitting 360. Heck, if if this was like my MLB Road to the show or franchise mode where Jock Peterson is hitting his is hitting 450 with, you know, 20 home runs in the first 40 games, then I’d like that situation to be the reality. Um, but if he was doing that, his message of standing up and being a vocal leader would hit harder. But right now, when when you’ve got an OPS plus that just barely got above the negatives, your message rings rings hollow. And whatever message this coaching staff is is putting in, it’s it’s ringing hollow right now, I it I I know I no longer have rational, reasonable, measured takes about what could actually fix this team, what could make this team go right. I’ve just gone down to my base instincts. I don’t know. Fire everybody, fire everybody, bench everybody, cut everybody, you just scrap this whole team and and start again. That’s it’s not a reasonable place to be as someone who prides themsself on being eh at least attempting to be reasonable most of the time. I I try and do that. I try and provide some measured takes, but this team is at 500 and honestly it feels like a miracle they’re at 500 right now. It feels like they’re a million games under 500. You got to remember, hopefully this team can remember, hey, it’s been bad. It has been painful. There’s been a lot of really bad hitting going on here. But despite all of that, despite every single instance where this team gets shut out or scores one run or two runs or the bullpen isn’t able to hold the zero run lead that they’re given because this offense can’t do anything, this team does still have a chance to turn things around. I don’t really care about what all these historical measures and and markers are about, oh well, a team that’s hit this crappily for the first 30 games of the season, they’ve never turned it around. I don’t know that there’s ever been a team that is really this talented that has hit this crappily, this spectacularly bad for this extended of a stretch. And with all of that team’s 500, you’re 500. You’re not that far out of it. If they take two out of three this weekend against the Mariners, they won’t be far out of that top spot in the AOS. Technically, they take all three. I think they will be Yeah, they will be in first place in the AO West assuming that um Houston and the A’s have uh mediocre weekends. Actually, with the with the game, they they might be just out of first place in the AOS, but it’s still it’s not that far off from this team actually being in a decent spot. They’re not in a horrible spot. The AOS is shockingly much better than we all anticipated. Last year was probably the worst division in baseball. Probably this year, well, it’s it’s sure not the best, but it it sure as heck isn’t the worst. Heck, the the one team with four teams that are at 500 or better in the American League, that’s the AOS. That’s not the AL Central. It’s not the the dominant unstoppable AL. It’s the AOS. these A’s, they bang and the Rangers kept them off the board for the most part in this series. Their pitching staff is fine. They’ve got some good pitchers. Mason Miller, incredible pitcher. Not scoring on him for a a four game series, that’s that’s part for the course. Not scoring on Luis Severino, eh, not ideal, but it happens. Not scoring on Jeffrey Springs just a week after he gave up seven runs to to the White Sox, that that feels horrible. But even for all this maddening nonsense, there’s still 500. I want to leave you with something nice to end this weekend. But my goodness, after this week, it feels like the only nice thing I had to say is that you can try your very best to enjoy baseball.

The Texas Rangers scored 15 runs on Tuesday and followed it up with a combined 1 run in back-to-back horrible offensive performances. As a result GM Chris Young sent Jake Burger to AAA and recalled prospect Blaine Crim in a dramatic move showing nobody is safe.

Tyler Mahle pitched well, but one run proved an insurmountable deficit to overcome for this offense that is in a horrible way.

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