On Deck will be here all season to provide you with everything you need to know (and a few things you don't) about every Rangers series during the 2014 season.
The Opponent: The Marlins are surprisingly competitors in the National League East and actually hold a Wild Card spot if the season were to end today. They're doing it by being one of baseball's best home teams and with one of the better young outfields in the league.
Past Meetings: The teams havent' met since July 2011, when the then-Florida Marlins took two of three games from the Rangers in Arlington.
Pitching Matchups: Tuesday — Colby Lewis (4-4, 5.77 ERA) vs. Tom Koehler (5-5, 3.33); Wednesday — Yu Darvish (6-2, 2.36) vs. TBD.
What's Hot: The Rangers lost three of four games to Cleveland, but it was no fault of Adrian Beltre and Alex Rios, who are both tattooing the baseball at the moment. Beltre is hitting .464 with two doubles, three bombs and nine RBIs in the last seven games. Rios is hitting at a .462 clip in that same span with a double and two triples. One of the few bright spots of the pitching staff over the past week has been Jason Frasor, who has pitched four scoreless innings in the last week and given up just one hit.
Garrett Jones is hitting .381 over his last six games, and one of the Marlins' triumvirate of young outfielders, Marcell Ozuna, is hitting .320 with a double, homer and four RBIs.
What's Not: Even Yu Darvish wasn't too good in his last outing, even though the Rangers squeaked out a 6-4 win over the Indians. Colby Lewis gave up five runs in five innings of work on seven hits in his last outing. Shin-Soo Choo is now mired in a 1-for-24 slump over his last seven games. He does have six walks, but he's also struck out seven times.
Sports Connection
Connecting you to your favorite North Texas sports teams as well as sports news around the globe.
Koehler gave up three runs on six hits in five innings of work in his last outing for the Marlins, and Marlins catcher Jeff Mathis is 1-for-14 in his last six games.
Familiar Faces: Jeff Baker returns to Arlington with the Marlins after playing a fairly key role with Texas last season when he was a utility extraordinare and one of the bigger bats in a power-starved lineup.
