Cactus League: Texas Rangers Rout Arizona in Spring Training Action

For the past decade, the Texas Rangers have been one of the top scoring teams in baseball, with an array of free swingers to go yard and an ample amount of hitters than can get on-base as table-setters. Tuesday in Scottsdale, those talents were on full display as Texas tallied runs early, late and in the middle in ambushing Arizona 16-3.

The Rangers pounded out 19 hits and if you discount the four home runs, all but two of the other hits were line-drive shots and seven of the outs they committed were lasers at Diamondbacks players who happened to get in the way. Even one of the D-Backs errors happened because the pitcher Evan Marshall was hit with a batted ball and after being stunned, retrieved the baseball and weakly threw over the first baseman’s head for the error because of the pain he was suffering.

Maybe the Arizona pitching wasn’t very good on Tuesday, but Rangers offense was devastating for all nine innings.

Rangers Notes—Of the 18 Texas players that had an official at-bat, 15 had hits. What the Rangers displayed was a very deep roster, loaded with power and speed. Starters Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler and Adrian Beltre never saw the field but that did not stop Texas from scoring. Younger players like Mike Olt at third base and 2B Greg Miclat showed excellent skills at the plate and in the field. Olt is coming off hitting 13 home runs in the Arizona Fall League and Miclat showed good hands and quality speed.

Texas players have talked about finishing off what they started after blowing leads in Game 6 and 7 of the World Series. The center field position is set to be quite a battle with Julio Borbon, Craig Gentry and Leonys Martin, with Martin probably headed to the minors, but not for long.

Even new roster addition Conor Jackson, a former D-Back, looked to be getting into the  Rangers way of swinging the lumber, attempting to pull the ball more to add power and jerked a pitch over the left-field fence.

Matt Harrison gave up one hit over his two innings and kept his word about trying to work more inside against right-hand batters, in spite of lacking a blazing fastball. Harrison wants to get inside more to make his pitches on the outside corner more effective and give hitters more to think about.

Rangers pitchers only gave up five hits all day, with Mark Hamburger (I’m not kidding) delivering plenty of mustard on the fastball (did I just say that?) and having the onions to work up and in on Arizona hitters. (Please forgive me.)

As expected, Texas has all the pieces to be a serious threat to surpass their projected total of 91.5 wins this season and make good on last year World Series failures.

Diamondbacks Notes – Starter Joe Saunders was slapped around for five hits and two runs in his two innings and was not worried a bit, being a veteran of many spring camps. Saunders talked about feeling good about his pitches and said “location” was the issue, overstating the obvious.

Reliever Yonata Ortega had nothing today, and was tagged for six hits and five runs, never retiring a Texas hitter.

It was just one of those days, but when you looked at the two teams just as athletes and physical ability, the D-Backs do not match up. Despite winning 94 games and the NL West a season ago, most sportsbooks opened Arizona at 84 to 85 projected wins for 2012. The wagering public believes they might be somewhat better, with most books at 86 today.