SportsDay's Evan Grant, Barry Horn and Kevin Sherrington talk Rangers baseball on the "Ballzy" podcast. Here are some of the highlights.

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Yu Darvish's return

Kevin Sherrington: OK, Yu Darvish. We said last week that he would -- I said he would be under an 80-pitch pitch count. And that turned out to be just about right. 81 pitches in that game. The thing that really surprised me in that game, Evan, was that with the problem with Yu is the same with Cole Hamels is the same with a lot of really good pitchers. If you're going to get to them, you're going to have to get to them in the first inning. That's when they are tinkering, trying to find out what is working, what is not working. Yu would do that all the time and it was remarkable, because I believe in the first two innings, he threw what 22, 23 pitches? Something like that?

Evan Grant: I think I did the research on this last week before he came back and the number of pitches he threw in the first inning in his last seven starts or eight starts before the Tommy John surgery, he averaged about 19 pitches in the first inning. So that was a big difference. And I think part of it is the Rangers have urged him to throw the fastball more this year. He's got better command of the fastball. I think one thing that Yu said really going back to the time of the surgery was that he intended to make the year of recovery a time for him to get better. He talked about the mental aspect of baseball. I think that's what he's done. He's studied what he really needs to do to be the most effective and efficient pitcher possible. That is to command and control the fastball. He did a great job of that the other night, and not only that, I think we need to get into this: He had the best fastball of his life.

Sherrington: Yeah, 98 miles per hour. That was unbelieveable. I didn't even know he was capable of something like that.

Grant: He hit 98.7 and this was with a ball that he missed with. He hit 98.74 and 98.73 on another. Those were the two fastest pitches he's thrown as a big leaguer. He also hit 98.1 on another pitch. He's thrown in his big league career, according to the Statcast system, he's thrown four pitches at 98 miles or above and three of them were in his first start after Tommy John surgery. I think that tells you that he is certainly coming back strong. It will be interesting to see if the same level of adreniline and all of that that goes along with your first start is going to be pumping through his veins when he goes back onto the mound on Friday. But he certainly has got it in him. His fastball averaged 95.5 miles per hour between the two seamer and the four seamer in his first start. This guy has the ability to be an overwhelming fastball power pitcher. And that's what he showed himself to be in his first start.

Derek Holland's trade value

Sherrington: As long as we're talking about pitching, what about Derek Holland's performance on Monday against Cleveland?

Grant: Here's the thing. If the Rangers decide that they want to trade Derek Holland, I would suggest that they call the Indians. Because he is 3-0 in this park with a 1.22 ERA for his career. He pitched really well here last night. Got an early lead. That always helps the starter. What he did was he threw strikes and I think that Derek is maybe starting to realize that strikes don't mean pitches down the middle and they also don't necessarily mean perfect pitches. Just get them somewhere in towards the edges of the zone. If you can do that, you can be successful.

Barry Horn: Would there be a market out there for Holland?

Grant: His contract, I think he's got three club options after this year that are all fairly club friendly. If the Rangers decide to move on from him after this year, then yeah I think that there would be a market out there for him. I think Cleveland would certainly be an attractive spot for him, but the other part of that is that the Indians have a pretty good rotation themselves right now. Not sure if the Indians would need him. The other part of that is if the Rangers are going to make a deal at some point in time for Derek Holland, they are going to look to get something back in return to help them. This is way to early for me to start looking at rosters and see how these teams potentially match up for the future.

The future for Jurickson Profar

Horn: What about Profar? Where does he stand now with the Rangers?

Grant: Well, he's been up for four games and as we speak here on Tuesday morning, all he has done in that four games of what was supposed to be a seven-game callup is force the Rangers to at least discuss what his immediate future is. I think the Rangers have two ways to go long term. They can either look at the deadline and see if there is a long-term fit for them in the trade market that helps them contend this year but they could also control long term and potentially put Profar in a deal there, or if they don't see that or don't feel that they need that or there's not a piece that would require putting a guy of Jurickson's talent in to that trade, they can go to the offseason and then potentially examine the possibility of do they try and send Elvis Andrus somewhere just to save a little bit of money and put Jurickson into the shortstop position.

I think they've got two ways to look at things long term, but the short-term question is the one that is more intriguing. Is there a way to shoehorn him into this roster to allow him to play fairly regularly. By fairly regularly, I'm suggesting four times in a six-day period or four times in a seven-day period. I'm not sure that the way the Rangers are set up right now that it's very feasible. It's easy enough to say we could get him a start at short, we could get him a start at second, particularly against a left-hander each week. But then you go, what do you do next? Do you want to play him at DH? I think the Rangers are going to be really careful here with the Prince Fielder situation. They gave Shin Soo Choo through the All-Star break to really get things turned around.

I think if you look at the fabric of this team and the makeup of this team, Prince's presence in the clubhouse and the way he has approached the game since he has come back from his injury in terms of being a team player, in terms of doing what the game asks him to do, I think the Rangers respect that and I think his teammates respect that. I think if the club were to pull him out of the lineup, you risk creating something of a imbalance in the clubhouse. Right now they are winning while Prince is struggling. They can afford to let him try and work his way through it. So I think they're going to do that. That eliminates a start for him there. Could you sit Mitch Moreland down occasionally and put Prince at first base and Jurickson at DH? Or put Profar at second base, start Odor at DH and play Prince at first base. I suppose you could do that, but again to me three times in a six or seven days is not enough for this guy to stay sharp and for him to max out his talent or max out his value for a potential mid-season trade.

What Profar could net in a trade

Sherrington: You have been a huge proponent of a Sonny Gray trade. To get a Sonny Gray, it's going to take more than Jurickson Profar. Give me a package, with Profar in it, that you think the Rangers could get Sonny Gray for.

Grant: It's probably Profar and some kind of pitcher and probably a third lower-level prospect. You'd look at Profar and then you'd look at somebody from the pitching group of...

Sherrington: Like [Luis] Ortiz?

Grant: Yeah, I think the Rangers will try and protect Ortiz. But you would look at the group of Ortiz, Tate, I think Brett Martin at Class-A and I think the Rangers would try and talk about Chi Chi with the A's, but I'm not so sure the A's would go there. For a third prospect, I think you'd probably be talking about a younger guy that at this point in time I'm not even sure. I also wonder by July, based on the fact that Sonny's been hurt, he's been ineffective, I wonder if by the middle of July, this was a guy I had thrown out there last year, I wonder if Homer Bailey will be back and I wonder if the Red will have more intrest in Profar and I wonder if that won't be a trade that prehaps makes a little bit more sense.