Monday: An April to sort of remember.

As I write, I wonder: which month is the most important in a baseball season? The truth of the matter is, is that they all are, because (assuming that the team is in contention) a win on the second day of the season can be just as important as a win on the second to last day of the season. With that said, it becomes evident that the Texas Rangers’ first month of the season contained wins and losses that may end up being of vital importance come September. We could say: “Man, I’m sure glad they won that game,” or: “If we’d just gotten one more run in that game…” The same thing can be said for hitters battling out a key stat in September. Remember a few years ago when Todd Helton and Albert Pujols were neck and neck in the batting race in September. Pujols ended up beating Helton by one point. Being a big Todd Helton fan, I was thinking why he couldn’t have just had one more hit in one of those at bats back in April or May or June? For a player, one more hit, for a team, just one more win. The bottom line is this: The games are important all season long, not just in September. I don’t want to put too much emphasis on the early competition, but if the Rangers are playing meaningful baseball in August and September, then their decent April can’t be ignored. Now I know they ended up a game below 500, but just look at where they were last year and feel glad. Though it’s already May, it’s still early enough in the month to put together a quick review of the opening weeks of the Texas Rangers’ season.

The two key hitters were…Ian Kinsler and Michael Young. Though Kinsler faded toward the end of April, he still finished the month among the league leaders in nearly every offensive category. Also, his defense was nearly impeccable. Kinsler has always seemed to hit a lot of homeruns early on (remember his outrageous start to the 2007 season?) and this year was no different. Kinsler has a beautiful uppercut swing, and though he’s a speedy leadoff hitter, he has the necessary tools to hit the ball out of the park on a consistent basis. No, I don’t think Ian will be a guy who averages 45 long balls a season, but I do think, as he continues to develop as a player, he’ll be able to hit maybe 30 to 32 homeruns. He definitely has the power, and his stroke is somewhat reminiscent to Indian’s leadoff hitter Grady Sizemore, who reached 30 homeruns for the first time last season. But the power numbers aside, Ian’s April was good in nearly every other way, from his incessant streak of doubles to his speed on the base paths. I was considering putting Marlon Byrd in the place of Young (though I like David Murphy, I have to admit that Byrd was a life saver for the Rangers during Murphy’s struggles) but then I remembered those game winning homeruns Young hit, and I simply couldn’t leave him out. Like Kinsler, Young seems to have found his power stroke early on. I’m hoping that he’ll be able to get back to the 20-25 homerun range like he did in 04 and 05 when he hit 22 and 24 homers respectively. Young still believes that he hasn’t had in his best season. Though 2005 would be pretty hard to even duplicate, I wouldn’t be surprised of he is able to at least come reasonably close to those numbers this year.

The two key pitchers were…Kevin Millwood and Frankie Francisco. Due to the Rangers’ dismal pitching in April, this choice wasn’t too hard. Millwood pitched at least seven innings in each of his starts, and made it over 100 pitches in all of them. Though the less pitches Kevin throws the better, seeing him stay in the game even when he’s up over the 100 pitch mark just feels sort of satisfying. I was slightly cynical about Frank Francisco going into the season as the team’s closer. Well, whatever doubts and suspicions I had of him have been laid to rest. Francisco was lights out in April. No he was more than that. It’s difficult to find the words of praise for a pitcher who has an ERA of 0. Now the only hope is that both Millwood and Francisco can pitch like this for the rest of the season (well they don’t have to be quite as good all the time) and that the rest of the pitching staff will follow suite.

So, April is gone, and overall I was very pleased with it, despite a patch that made me nearly tear the team to pieces in a post a few weeks back. We had a lot of questions going into this year, and many of them have been answered. Would Elvis Andrus survive? Would Michael Young be able to handle third base? Would Francisco be able to close games? Yes, yes, and yes. The one player people who assumed would be great and turned out to be quite the opposite was Josh Hamilton. Josh did not fare too well, hitting just 242 with 2 homeruns in 18 games before being put on the disabled list. Also, David Murphy surprisingly got off to an abominable 0 for 23 start, but since then has been regaining his stroke. No, the pitching hasn’t been there, but it is slowly showing signs of improvement, especially with Derek Holland out to help in the bullpen.

My overall assessment of the Rangers' April on a 1 to 10 scale would be 5 1/2 for their sheer talent that is just a little rusty around the edges. Once that rust is gone though, I think we’ll have a pretty special team here in Texas.