The Texas Rangers had been waiting for Alexi Ogando to show up this season after moving him back to his preferred role in the bullpen, where he is an electric arm that can give you multiple innings in high leverage situations.
Ogando came into the game on Wednesday with a 1-0 deficit and promptly struck out four straight batters spanning two innings of work, including when he struck out the side in the seventh inning. In the eighth inning, after he'd already worked 1 1/3 innings, Ogando began to run into trouble. He surrendered a leadoff walk and a bloop single to A.J. Pierzynski. After a failed double play on a bobbled ball by Elvis Andrus, David Ortiz came to the plate and brought in Neal Cotts.
The rest was history.
As bad as Ogando's final inning went on Wednesday, his first 1 1/3 innings looked great, like a vintage Ogando throwing 96 mph fastballs and a pretty wicked slider. Those were two things that made Ogando so great in 2010 and 2012 out of the bullpen, and they'd been absent throughout the spring and early in the season.
With the way the Rangers' bullpen is right now, they need all the reliable arms they can get, and if Ogando can establish himself as one of those again it'd be a huge boost.
