Just over a month ago, we all took a deep breath after Scott Coolbaugh's first series on the job as the Texas Rangers' hitting coach when he replaced Thad Bosley, who was fired after just a couple of months in his first season as the Rangers' hitting coach.
Coolbaugh came in and watched as his team immediately fell flat on its face offensively when the Rangers dropped three of four games to the Minnesota Twins.
But in this recent 11-game win streak, in which pretty much everything wearing red and blue has looked good, the bats have been much better.
And many Rangers are attributing this offensive surge to working with Coolbaugh, specifically Ian Kinsler, who's been one of the biggest turnarounds as of late.
Kinsler is gradually working himself out of a pretty horrid start in the average department, though his on-base percentage has stayed pretty consistent because he was taking walks even while he was struggling.
Just in the last 10 games, Kinsler has seen his average rise from .244 to .252 and had a 10-game hitting streak snapped in Sunday's 3-1 win over the Mariners.
In that same amount of time, Elvis Andrus has watched his average go from .268 to .285.
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That's the top two spots in the lineup producing at a much better clip recently, and that has been good for the entire lineup.
Case in point: Since Josh Hamilton returned from the DL, he leads the AL in RBIs. In that same time period, Adrian Beltre is second in the AL. That, of course, is a direct result of the top of the order producing.
Looks like that Scott Coolbaugh experiment is working OK, after all.
