Rangers at Twins
THE STORY: The Minnesota Twins are a last-place team starting to play like a first-place team. The Texas Rangers are a first-place team making the personnel moves of a last-place team. On Wednesday, they fired their hitting coach who was two months into his first year on the job. The Rangers lead the surprising Seattle Mariners by 2 ½ games in the AL West, while the Twins still have the league’s worst record, but have the advantage of playing in one of baseball’s weakest divisions.
TV: 8:10 p.m. ET, Fox Sports Southwest, Fox Sports North
PITCHING MATCHUP: Rangers LH Derek Holland (5-1, 4.36) vs. Twins RH Nick Blackburn (5-4, 3.57)
Holland is coming off a complete game shutout over the Cleveland Indians on June 4. He had been roughed up in his two previous outings, but his only loss this season came at New York on April 16. Holland is 1-2 with a 5.94 ERA in four career starts against the Twins.
Blackburn will start despite leaving his last start after five innings because of tightness in his back. He is 4-0 with a 2.64 ERA since the start of May and he has allowed more than two runs in just one of his last seven starts. He is 1-2 in four career starts against Texas with a 3.81 ERA.
ABOUT THE RANGERS (35-28): Thad Bosley was fired as the team’s hitting instructor two months into his first season on the job. He was replaced by Triple-A hitting coach Scott Coolbaugh. The Rangers are in first place in the AL West, but Bosley seemed to be clashing with players and the team’s best sluggers are slumping. The Rangers had scored 23 fewer runs through the first 62 games than last year despite adding veterans like Adrian Beltre and Mike Napoli to the lineup. Ian Kinsler and Josh Hamilton have both struggled this season and Yorvit Torrealba had an explosive exchange with Bosley recently that occurred on the field and continued into the clubhouse. Bosley had replaced Clint Hurdle, who left after last season to manage the Pittsburgh Pirates.
ABOUT THE TWINS (23-38): It’s not too late for Minnesota to climb back into the Central Division race, particularly if it keeps playing this well. The Twins are 6-1 in June after a dreadful 17-37 start over the season’s first two months. They begin a mammoth 10-game homestand on Thursday 11 ½ games behind the division-leading Cleveland Indians, though they took two of three from the Tribe already this week. The Twins’ grueling start included 40 of the first 61 games on the road. Now they’ll play 30 of their next 40 at home, and should get back injured key components such as Joe Mauer, Jason Kubel and Joe Nathan during that time, too.
FINAL PITCH: “Anything can happen. We could just be the most dominant team from here on out, you never know. Plus, we're doing this without (Joe) Mauer and (Jim) Thome, all these guys in the lineup. You never know what we could do. We might do something down the road.” – Twins outfielder Ben Revere, who extended his hitting streak to 11 games with three hits on Wednesday