Nick Tepesch has had a roller-coaster year for the Texas Rangers.
It started in spring training, when the Rangers wanted desperately for Tepesch to win a rotation spot heading into the season. That didn't happen because Tepesch was so bad he was sent to minor-league camp before spring training even wrapped.
So Tepesch went to Triple-A Round Rock and excelled, to the tune of a sub-2.00 ERA prior to a call-up in May.
Since his call-up, Tepesch has been up and down. He's had some great starts and some duds — what you'd expect from a decent pitching prospect who is still trying to figure out how to pitch to big-league hitters.
But Tepesch now has over 100 innings this season and needs to start figuring things out if he wants to be in the Rangers' Opening Day rotation plans for 2015 along with Yu Darvish, Derek Holland, most likely Colby Lewis and then fill in the blank.
His last time out, Tepesch worked just 4 2/3 innings and allowed 10 hits. He only gave up three runs, which seems like bad logic given the hits allowed in so few innings, but he wasn't good.
When he opens a road series in Oakland on Tuesday, he'll need another outing that goes six or seven innings. It'd be good for his confidence, and for the Rangers' confidence in him.
