* Briefly Explaining Lotsa Texas Rangers Events (Sometimes not so briefly)

The Rangers had a late lead against Chris Sale on Wednesday night.

Then they didn't.

And so now we have to look for blame, right? That's what we do, isn't it? When something goes wrong, find a scapegoat. The social media world, for whatever that's worth, seemed to be split between heaping it on Rangers manager Jeff Banister for making a change, or not making it soon enough, or for going to Sam Dyson at all. The rest of Twitter marched with pitchforks towards Sam Dyson's house.

It's easy to assign blame.

It's much harder to find solutions.

Sitting in the press box, I thought Martin Perez, bumping up against his season high for pitches thrown, would be done after six and was surprised to see Dyson enter. I was surprised when Dyson didn't enter after Perez allowed the first baserunner. Twitter was surprised when Dyson entered at all. This is how I summed it up in the middle of Dyson allowing seven consecutive baserunners to reach, leading to a seven-run inning.

Choices seemed to be:



-Ask Perez to go past career high in a jam.

-Use Dyson to start clean inning.

-Bypass Dyson, ask Kela to go two. https://t.co/eP96dU43RI — Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) May 25, 2017

In hindsight now, with a 9-4 loss on their hands and facing a possible sweep in Boston, it's easy to say none of those options look real attractive. But the manager doesn't get the ability to create attractive options where there are none.

And where the seventh inning is concerned, there haven't been any for the Rangers. Consider that in the seventh inning this season, opponents are batting .309 against Rangers pitchers (highest in the majors in the seventh) and have an .828 OPS (also highest).

One more set of numbers:

Rangers have been outscored 38-20 in the 7th inning this year. They have no attractive seventh-inning options. — Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) May 25, 2017

So what should the choices have been? Let's break them down:

Martin Perez: He had thrown 102 pitches through six innings, two shy of his season high, but had retired nine of the previous 11 hitters and was rocketing his fastball back into the mid-90s with ease. He was sharp. Given the troubles the Rangers have had with relievers in the seventh, in hindsight (a key phrase this morning), there really was no issue with Perez going to the mound to start the inning.

The question is: Do you take him out after the first base hit? If you want to parse this up, I guess you could make a case for this. But it's always dicey to judge a pitcher's relative effectiveness based on a ground ball base hit. A lot of that is just bad luck that a fielder, namely Rougned Odor, couldn't get to it. Odor had a lot of issues getting to a lot of ground balls Wednesday.

Sam Dyson: Banister said after the game the minute he brought in Dyson, he expected Boston to start emptying its bench of left-handed hitters. They did. So, if he had brought Dyson in earlier, he simply would have faced lefties earlier. And if he's trying to create a "clean" inning atmosphere for Dyson to pitch, then we are forgetting that Dyson was the closer last year and pitched in plenty of high leverage situations.

Dyson had his best outing of the year on Sunday in Detroit and was well-rested. He showed swing-and-miss capabilities in that Detroit outing, something he'd lacked for most of the year. Is one outing a recovery? No. But it was a start. Also, there was some evidence to suggest a longer run of success, based on 16 ground balls and just three fly balls in six May outings. He'd allowed one run over those seven innings and a completely acceptable .310 OBP. It appeared he was on the upswing. At least relatively speaking.

Alex Claudio: In retrospect, not sure bringing in Claudio to follow Perez is ideal for putting Claudio in a position to succeed. While Claudio has tremendous courage and a great feel for pitching, he's another lefty with lesser stuff than Perez. If he follows Perez into the game, the biggest advantage he has is a funky delivery, but some of the funkiness is taken out by hitters having faced a lefty for six innings. It was best to save him for a left-on-left situation.

Tony Barnette, Jeremy Jeffress: They were supposed to be the seventh inning options entering the season, but neither has performed particularly well. Both have 10 seventh-inning appearances to lead the club this year, which points us back to the Rangers' seventh-inning issues. Also both had pitched on Tuesday, neither particularly well, and neither was available for Wednesday.

Matt Bush, Keone Kela: There will be a segment of fans who believe the best relievers should be used for the highest leverage situations. There is something to be said for this, at least in theory. But the practicality is this: If you start using these guys in the seventh every night, you are going to run them into the ground. And the leverage is likely to be just as high come the eighth and ninth.

No the problem here wasn't Jeff Banister's decision making. It was lack of execution by the bullpen and perhaps by the infielders. That's been a recurring theme all year. Dyson and Jeffress have simply failed to this point.

Jeffress and Dyson composite numbers this year:



2-7 record, 4 blown saves

9.09 ERA

.381 Opp. BA

.463 Opp. OBP.



Four. Sixty. Three! — Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) May 25, 2017

The only thing the Rangers can do now is look at other options. They hope to have Jose Leclerc, unproven as he is promising back, perhaps next week.

Other options are Triple-A reliever Preston Claiborne, who has a bit of major league experience, and has a 2.04 ERA in 17 appearances there, and Connor Sadzeck, who is starting and throwing well at Double-A Round Rock. Sadzeck has perhaps the most powerful fastball in the organization and a two-pitch profile that suggests he may be best suited to be a back-of-the-bullpen reliever. The question for the Rangers is this: Do they risk eliminating the possibility of actually developing a starter to try to save the bullpen this season?

These are the hard questions. Much harder than trying to figure out who to blame for a seventh inning gone awry in Boston.