While baseball is in a lockout, I wanted to seize the opportunity to post some of the content I am writing for my book about the 2009-2012 Texas Rangers called The Almost Champions. I go in depth from articles I wrote, people I interviewed and memories I have about the run the Rangers had. Now here is a little history on me: I started blogging in 2009 and podcasting in 2009 as well. While the podcast covered all sports, my blog has always been about the Rangers. I have had to clean up many of the articles based on my severe lack of writing talent so many years ago. What I will be posting here is a summation of the forthcoming book. I hope you all find it entertaining and enlightening.
Now before I get into it however, I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart. This website was founded in January of 2011, and myself and many friends over the years have been contributing to it. While 2016 was our biggest month ever, You guys are helping us rock in in 2021. It is our biggest month since 2016. Thank you too all the readers/listeners who have donated through buy me a coffee or Patreon, or purchased merch from our shop. It means the world to me. Also a huge thanks to our biggest sponsor Waltons. They have improved the quality of our podcast immensely and we can’t thank them enough. And in case you were curious, their seasonings and products are truly amazing and I use them everyday, not just because they sponsor us! (By the way, use code Rangers15 for 15% off your first order). Let’s move on to the actual article.
The Starting Five
The Texas Rangers were coming off a season where they finished 79-83, good enough for second in the American League West. On opening day of 2009 they fielded these five starting pitchers:
They also had a young man named Derek Holland make 19 starts and another pitcher named Tommy Hunter make 18 starts. The bullpen had names like Eddie Guardado, Frankie Francisco, Darren O’Day and C.J. Wilson. They fared much better than everyone thought they would to be honest.
The Starting Nine
The Rangers had a young core to start out the 2009 season, which looked like this:
Catcher – Jarrod Saltalamacchia
First Base – Chris Davis
Second Base – Ian Kinsler
Third Base – Michael Young
Short Stop – Elvis Andrus
Left Field – Josh Hamilton/David Murphy (Hamilton was injured and played just 89 games)
Center Field – Marlin Byrd
Right Field – Nelson Cruz
DH – Andruw Jones
The bench had players like Pudge Rodriguez, Taylor Teagarden, Hank Blalock, Omar Vizquel, Julio Borbon and kitten face himself Craig Gentry.
The Rangers had their ups and downs in the month of April, finishing with a record of 10-11 for the first month. They played better in May and finished 30-20. The young nucleus of this team was meshing and playing well. Noteable for the month of May was that Derek Holland got his first MLB start. Here is a link to an article I wrote in May of that month describing what made this team different from past teams. The team was heating up and fans were starting to take notice. We will continue the series next time with June and July of 2009. Let me know what you think of The Almost Champions series on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or right here in the comment section.
