Rangers vs. Mariners Preview

The Rangers finish off the first half of the season with a 4 game swing through Seattle. This series will be important for Texas because they want to end a strong first half with a strong finish. Seattle will want to use these games to further real in Texas in the west. With a strong June where they went 15-10, Seattle has moved to 4.5 behind Texas. The Rangers will have trouble matching up with Seattle's starting pitching, but there are several distinct advantages Texas has over the Mariners that should give them the edge in this series.

Starting Pitching: The Mariners' starting pitchers can flat out throw it. Their 3.78 ERA is good enough for 1st in the American League. Felix Hernandez will go tonight for Seattle and he is in the top 10 in all major individual pitching categories in the AL. In his only start vs Texas this year, he went 7 innings and gave up 0 runs. Texas will counter tonight with Tommy Hunter who was brilliant against Tampa Bay, but it is still a young kid trying to make his way in this league. I'll have a more in depth look at the pitching match-ups of the following games as the series goes on.

Offense: I have grilled the Rangers on their on base % this year, but surprisingly they have a higher OBS than the Mariners do....geeeez. The Mariners are slightly ahead of the Rangers in batting average and total hits, but the Rangers have 87 more runs scored so they get the advantage. The key will be to get Ian Kinsler going and for the rest of the guys to stay hot. They will see some very good pitching, but if they remain disciplined they can have the same success as they did against the Angels top pitchers. For Seattle, they rely on Ichiro to be their catalyst. It is important to keep him off the bases.

Defense: Not much you can really say here except Ranger defense - good and improving. Mariners defense - garbage. The reason the Mariners have not been more competative in the west is because of their defense. They are coming off a complete meltdown agaist Baltimore where they made two key errors in the 9th inning to lose that game.


The Rangers are hot right now and they need to keep it up in these next 4 games. Eventually Hank, Murph, Jones, and Marlon Byrd are going to cool off and they will need the steady production of Mike Young and much much improvement out of Ian Kinsler. He got the night off last night and he is no longer in the running for the All-Star team, so maybe he is rested, focused, and ready to contribute to the Texas offense. I'll give T. R. Sullvin the last word on this thing:

By T.R. Sullivan / MLB.com

07/09/09 2:00 AM ET

ANAHEIM -- Ian Kinsler will be back in the lineup when the Rangers open a four-game series with the Mariners on Thursday at Safeco Field.

Kinsler, one of five candidates for the 2008 All-Star Game Sprint Final Vote, was given a night off by manager Ron Washington after going 4-for-39 in his last nine games.

Asked if he was tired, Kinsler said, "It comes and it goes. It's something that you have to deal with when you play every day. That's the way it goes. I'm grinding. I'm trying to get ready for the second half and ready for a playoff push at the end."

The Rangers go into the series having seven of their last eight games after taking two of three from the Angels in Anaheim. That left them in first place, one game ahead of the Angels and 41/2 games ahead of the Mariners.

This is only the seventh time in club history the Rangers have been in first place by at least one game as late as July 8. Three of those seasons came in 1996 and '98-99, when they won their three division titles, and in '94, when they were in first place at the time of the season-ending strike.

The Rangers also go into the series with a 17-5 record against the American League West, including a 5-0 record against the Mariners. They took two from the Mariners at Safeco Field on May 4-5 and swept a three-game series in Arlington.

Log on tonight for the live in-game blog, barring any sudden poker tournaments participated in by my buddy the Yankee's fan, I will be back hosting. Go Rangers!