With a record of 37-49, the Texas Rangers‘ 2014 season is all but lost. For all the hype and anticipation following the offseason acquisitions of Prince Fielder and Shin-Soo Choo, things have gone too far south about as quickly as possible.
That’s right. It only took 86 games to completely bury this team that was a legitimate World Series contender on March 31. The day the Rangers acquired Choo and completed a monstrous offseason agenda, you’d be hard-pressed to find one living soul who would honestly tell you that he or she predicted death that quickly.
Right now, the Seattle Mariners are 10 games ahead of Texas. Ten games.
When was the last time you could say that? 2001?
Something like that.
And now with the July 31 trade deadline approaching, it’s time for the Rangers to start selling some of the few attractive pieces they have on their roster.
We’ll go through each tradeable candidate and discuss how likely they are to be dealt. Since we are still over three weeks away from the deadline—and given general manager Jon Daniels’ history of pushing right up against the exact deadline before deals in the past have been completed—I won’t speculate too much on what each of these guys could bring back to Texas.
Here we go.