SEATTLE - There are still more than a month remaining in a lost season long injuries and other time but when the Texas Rangers leave Seattle Wednesday, could have a final insult he threw at them.
They could be officially eliminated from the NL West race.
With a 5-0 loss to Seattle that was dominated by the inability of rookie Nick Martinez to get ahead of hitters and complicated by their inability to break the sharp breaking ball, the Rangers fell to 51-80 for the season.
They trail the Angels by 27 games and Oakland by 26.5 with 31 games remaining. Technically, the "tragic number" in the AL West is five. But in reality it is two. With 78 wins and 77, respectively, and seven games against each other, one of the Angels and A's at least 81 wins is guaranteed. Any combination of losses Rangers and Los Angeles or Oakland won the equality of two deleted Texas.
Not that it really matters. The disputing party of the season aside long ago. Now it comes to the improvement of the players who are auditioning for 2015.
On Tuesday, the latest performance of RHP Nick Martinez was wrong. Martinez lacked command of his fastball and fell behind early in the count and backed with a soft curve ball, crazy that left him unable to escape jams.
"I think I very well with the fastball," Martinez, who joined Derek Holland (in 2009) as the only rookie Rangers to reach at least 10 losses in his first season in the last 25 years said. "I was a little too nibbly. I think that comes from overconfidence on my part. I feel I can get to that point and start going there instead of going after the hitter."
The result was a litany of situations in which he left behind, and when he was not walking batters, he also did not have a sharp curve ball enough to deceive.
It started in the first inning when Robinson Cano was able to sit in perhaps the sharpest curve that threw all night, go down and right and center pull.
In the second episode Kyle Seager balance curve for a single. Seager moved in a couple of rides, and then scored on a groundout. And in the fourth after a leadoff walk and simple to Chris Taylor, No. 8 hitter Endy Chavez reached out to another curve ball bow gently and went over the head of Daniel Robertson for a two-run double.
That put the Rangers into a 4-0 hole. Or, in other words, he ended the game. The Rangers have scored at least four runs once in the last 13 games and only three times in the last month.
Martinez also condemned its tenth defeat in 13 decisions. Holland, in 2009, was the last rookie to lose 10 games. But it also has valuable experience that helped accelerate his rise to legitimate major league pitcher.
"Holland has the same of him I hope Nick gets," said Rangers manager Ron Washington. "He learned to better manage the game. Was learned that when you are struggling with a pitch in his repertoire, to find something else to survive until you can find another launch again. This is what good pitchers do. Even they do not have good things to find a way to survive. Competed tonight. Simply could not survive it. "
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