After Tony Barnette's big-league debut with the Rangers, it was pretty easy to have a knee-jerk reaction and a desire to ship him right out of town.
It was different than a similar reaction to Shawn Tolleson, or even Tom Wilhelmsen, who are proven at different levels in big-league baseball. Barnette had spent his career previously in Japan, and without sounding harsh, American pitchers in Japan are in Japan for a reason.
So when he allowed two runs on three hits while getting just two outs in his Rangers debut — a 10-2 loss to Seattle, his leash seemed short.
Since then, however, Barnette has been tremendous and could be working his way into the high-leverage parts of the Rangers' bullpen that is filled with power arms.
Barnette has worked four games since that opening failure (4 1/3 innings) and hasn't allowed a run while giving up just two hits. On Wednesday, he pitched 2 1/3 shutout innings before the Rangers eventually lost a game in the 10th inning.
He's pretty much the perfect example of the Rangers' entire bullpen, which struggled for two of the team's first three games before getting back to the type of work they did down the stretch in 2015, and that's nice to see.
