Rangers Pitching Coming Off Awful Spring

The Texas Rangers' starting rotation took a big hit this spring when it lost Yu Darvish for the season. The bullpen took a blow with mild injuries to Shawn Tolleson, Tanner Scheppers and Kyuji Fujikawa. All of that has been a recipe for disaster, and it's proven to be true as the Rangers are sporting the league's worst spring record along with the worst spring staff ERA.

As our colleague at The Dallas Morning News, Gerry Fraley, points out, the Rangers could be in trouble as a result of those two stats.

The Rangers enter this weekend's final two exhibitions against the Mets at Globe Life Park with a spring ERA of 6.29, which blows away everyone else for worst ERA in the league, and a 9-18-4 record. Those two stats combined have spelled doom for teams in recent years. In the past nine seasons, in fact, the worst team in the spring has finished the regular season with a losing record, as Fraley points out.

Spring training games really don't mean much and are hard to gauge. You're talking about Double-A and Triple-A players mixing in with big-leaguers and figuring into results of games. You have starting pitchers working through kinks, working on new pitches, and generally not caring about results.

The Rangers will most likely have the distinction when spring training ends on Saturday, and it'll be interesting to see what it translates to when the games start counting on Monday in Oakland.

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