The Rangers are sliding again. Perhaps you’ve noticed. The last time they won was September 8, and even that was just their second win in seven games. Since then they have zero wins in seven games, losing on Monday to the Rays, who are direct wild-card competition. To make matters worse, the Rangers haven’t even had a single lead in this seven-game cold streak. Or maybe that doesn’t make matters worse. Maybe it’d be worse to have blown leads. Maybe the sequences don’t matter, provided the end result is still a loss. Who cares how you get there? Losing is losing, and mid-September is the wrong time to be losing.

Used to be, the Rangers felt like postseason shoo-ins. Now they’re clinging to a half-game lead for a wild-card slot, their division hopes entirely dashed. There are four teams on the Rangers’ heels, the Indians tied in the win column. Our playoff odds report puts the Rangers’ chances of getting beyond the regular season at 47%. It is now, basically, a coin flip, where it used to be a flip of a very biased coin. Though hope is far from lost, the Rangers need to get to work, because now they can’t back into the playoffs — they’ve already done the backing up. The Rangers need to score and not let the other guys score.

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It is tough to criticize the Texas Rangers’ decisions. If the current standings hold up, they will win the American League Westfor the third time in four years. Even if Oakland catches up, the Rangers will still probably make the playoffs for the fourth season in a row. They went to the World Series in 2010 and 2011. No team has a spotless record when it comes to personnel decisions either at the time or in hindsight. Every team enjoys some good luck and suffers some bad luck. These days, no team has a lineup full of superstars or even above-average players. Most teams have to get by with at least one or two mediocre players, usually to save money so that it can be spent elsewhere.

Thus, it is not completely strange that Rangers are making do with Mitch Moreland as their primary first baseman once again. Moreland got off to a hot start this season, but came back to earth with a current seasonal line of .244/.306/.446 (98 wRC+). He is is even starting to lose playing time in a semi-platoon with journeyman Jeff Baker. Moreland was only a bit better last season, which he finished with a 105 wRC+ after splitting first base duties with Michael Young and Mike Napoli. Moreland is pretty much a league average bat, which does not cut it as a first baseman, even if it does not kill the Rangers given their other strengths. As written above, few teams are without a weak spot on the diamond.

Nonetheless, the Rangers would obviously like to be better at first base. From that perspective, it is interesting to see the talented first baseman that came up with Texas over the last decade or so and have since moved on.

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When Adrian Beltre put up one of the best seasons in the history of baseball in 2004, it was labeled many things: an historic fluke, evidence of steroid usage, and/or the greatest example in history of a player trying to cash in on a big contract in his walk year. He went from hitting 23 home runs in 2003 to 48 in 2004, and posted a higher WAR in that one year than he had in the prior three seasons combined.

The narrative just got louder when he went to Seattle and regressed back to his prior levels in his first year under the new contract. It was called a fluke to end all flukes, or it was proof that Beltre just started juicing in order to land a huge paycheck, and then he stopped taking PEDs after he got rich off the deal. These are the conclusions people drew. These are the conclusions people still draw, 10 years later; Just do a twitter search for Chris Davis+steroids.

Well, maybe it’s time to reevaluate those conclusions, because Adrian Beltre has done it again.

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For a while, Biogenesis didn’t exist. Then for a while, Biogenesis did exist, but we didn’t know anything about it. Then we started to know a lot about it, and in particular a lot about its distribution of performance-enhancing drugs, but it didn’t seem like baseball would be able to hand out much in the way of discipline. Then it seemed like baseball would be able to deliver suspensions, but not until 2014, after appeals were dealt with. Now baseball has handed out suspensions and all but one will go un-fought. This Monday is the big day: on this Monday, players tied to Biogenesis have been given official discipline.

Naturally, people are going to have questions. What does a 50-game suspension mean? What are the rest of the consequences out of all this? It’s too soon to really have an FAQ, because this early no Qs have been FA’d, so consider this FAQ more anticipatory. Let’s focus on the suspended Nelson Cruz, and the suspended Jhonny Peralta.

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At most, the trade deadline completely consumed you. Like a gas, it expanded to fill the entire volume of your being, and you lost everything but your unwavering anticipation. Family, friends, loved ones, employment — sacrificed, all of them, cast aside, so you could commit yourself to figuring out whether your team would trade for Bud Norris. At least, the trade deadline was a partial distraction, something besides the games to take your attention away from the games somewhat. We have only so much attention to give, and the deadline caused that attention to be divided. Only now can we get back to something approximating normal.

Because of the deadline, you might’ve missed what happened. Already this week, baseball has seen at least three highly unusual things take place on the field. I thought I’d take this opportunity to note all of them, just to make sure they didn’t slip by un- or under-noticed. I say “at least three” because it’s entirely possible I’m missing more rare events. If there is something I missed, you can blame the deadline. It divided my attention, too, and I couldn’t really help it. Now let’s get to appreciating the incredible.

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Here’s one reason you wouldn’t think the Rangers would consider trading closer Joe Nathan: they’re only a game and a half out of the second American League wild-card slot, despite a current team-wide slump. Plus, their division isn’t entirely out of reach. Here’s a second reason you wouldn’t think the Rangers would consider trading Nathan: just a short while ago, they put a package together to land pending free agent Matt Garza. And here’s a third reason, in case you wanted a third: earlier this month, Nathan got the save for the AL in the All-Star Game. That isn’t about the significance of the game; the game doesn’t matter, for our purposes. It’s that Nathan was an All-Star, because to this point he’s been super good. For the Rangers, he’s been a major contributor.

The Rangers, though, have talked about a Nathan deal. According to Buster Olney, they’ve actually been aggressive about it. The idea would be trading from a perceived strength to address a perceived weakness. It would represent neither buying nor selling, or it would represent both. What the Rangers want, right now, are some hitters. What the Rangers feel like they have, right now, are quality late-inning relievers, especially with Joakim Soria back and Neftali Feliz on the road. Most teams talk about most things, and the Rangers seem to have been intrigued by the idea of cashing in their closer for immediate help.

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It’s July 3. No it isn’t! But it is in this paragraph. It’s July 3, and it’s Texas, and it’s the bottom of the sixth of a game between the Rangers and the Mariners. There’s a score, but it doesn’t matter. Adrian Beltre leads off against Felix Hernandez, and on the third pitch, Beltre blasts an automatic double to right-center field, Dustin Ackley watching as the ball bounces over the fence. Beltre coasts into second, and he tries to get Hernandez’s ear. Hernandez, in turn, tries not to listen, but Beltre keeps boasting. Hernandez looks back at second before throwing his next pitch.

The first thing that makes Beltre easy to love is his talent. He’s a power hitter who doubles as one of the greatest defensive third basemen in recent history. The second thing is his drive. Beltre, as you’ve surely heard, once played through a destroyed testicle, and even scored the winning run. And the third thing is his personality. Beltre has an endearing sense of humor, and he’s also got his quirks. His happy feet, his aversion to being touched on the head, his rivalry with Felix Hernandez. Beltre and Hernandez are always playfully talking trash whenever they go head-to-head, and for Beltre, this particular double was revenge for the plate appearance prior.

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UPDATE: Matt Garza has officially been traded from the Cubs to the Rangers, reportedly in exchange for Mike Olt, C.J. Edwards, Justin Grimm, and a player to be named later. This post was originally published on Friday, July 19.

Matt Garza hasn’t been traded, yet, so Matt Garza hasn’t been traded to the Rangers, yet. In fact, a report circulated late Thursday night that the Rangers were examining their other options, backing away from the Garza pursuit. The price, they say, is a high one. But, Friday’s reports have made a Cubs/Rangers trade appear imminent, and as a matter of fact one could go down while I’m in the process of writing this post. That would be annoying for me but delightful for you. It’s a virtual certainty that the Cubs will deal Garza very soon, and the Rangers seem like far and away the most likely destination.

Joe Davidson says the Rangers and Cubs are reviewing the various medicals. If true, that implies this is at the later stages, and what’s unknown is what the Rangers would be giving up. It stands to reason Mike Olt would probably be involved, along with others, but I’ll leave prospect coverage to prospect coverers. Most important, here, is Garza — the free-agent-to-be — going to Texas, and what such a transaction might tell us about the way the Rangers view themselves.

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The last time I wrote about Edge% it was in the context of the Tampa Bay Rays using it to get their pitchers into more favorable counts on 1-1. But now I want to take that topic and drill a little deeper to understand how often edge pitches are taken for called strikes.

Overall, pitches taken on the edge are called strikes 69% of the time. But that aggregate measure hides some pretty substantial differences. Going further on that idea, I wanted to see how the count impacts the likelihood of a pitch on the edge being called a strike.

Here are the results:

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Ah, another fortnight has passed. How did you spend them? Perhaps you were deeply immersed in the Teapot Dome scandal? Perhaps you were eagerly awaiting the release of “Yeezus?” Perhaps you were simply watching the paint dry in anticipation of the next iteration of this series? I know I was doing at least one of these things.

As always, you can peep the explanation of our depth charts and standings pages — which fuel The Fortnight like so much lemon lime Gatorade — here. This week, we’ll be looking at the fortnight’s biggest losers.

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