Jim Bowden was GM in Washington when Mike's baseball career ended, and he basically forced Bacsik into retirement. So he's not Bowden's biggest fan, but years later as a writer, we're big fans of what Bowden is writing about our Rangers. Mike tells the story of how Bowden sent him into retirement and then he and Kevin discuss Bowden's article on ranking the Rangers as the 2nd best team in the American League.
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00:00So the Rangers clearly last year, not a great season, 78 and 84, but in the blurb from Bowden
00:21first for the Rangers, they have a significant number of impact players who were injured
00:25last year and are now healthy, such as Jacob DeGrom, Evan Carter, and Josh Young.
00:30Second, they have a plethora of young talent ready to break out, including Wyatt Langford,
00:36Carter, and Kamar Rocker. Third, and this is something that we've talked about a lot in the
00:41offseason, they acquired two more power bats this offseason, trading for Jake Berger and signing
00:47Jock Peterson, which lengthens their lineup and gives them eight of nine batters who have hit
00:5320 home runs in a season. Fourth, they have a deep starting rotation. Now I realize that
00:58that starting rotation can start to crumble if like DeGrom were to get hurt or... Yeah,
01:04and to your point this year, you really have to watch all of your guys' innings pitched as the
01:09season progresses. So if guys are healthy for the first two months, that's awesome.
01:13The issue will be if they've racked up approximately 50 plus innings after two months,
01:18I still have four more months to play with guys that didn't pitch much in 24.
01:22Exactly. Now you take those four factors with the core lineup, again, this is from Bowdoin,
01:28of Seager, Simeon, and Adolis, and it's easy to see the Rangers being formidable again.
01:34When future Hall of Famer Bruce Bochy led the Giants to three World Series titles,
01:38he did it every other year, 10, 12, and 14, rather than consecutively.
01:42Will history repeat itself this year for Bochy? So a very glowing review, as you might imagine,
01:49of the Rangers' prospects for this season if you're going to have them fourth. What do you
01:53think about the idea? I am super excited that the Rangers are back and we're about to start
01:58the season. Four does still seem high. It does, and I would agree with Jim Bowdoin
02:06if they had a closer. If I felt better about the last three outs, I think that they could maybe win
02:14the most games in the American League. It's hard to believe that you could win more games than the
02:17Dodgers this year. To be honest, their depth is insane.