This much we know about the 2014 Texas Rangers rotation on a chilly January day: it’s going to feature Yu Darvish, and it’s going to contain some other guys. That’s no slight to the candidates to fill the latter category — some of them are quite good. It’s just that, at this point, we don’t know exactly who they will be.
So let’s speculate wildly, shall we!
In the tumultuous world of relief pitching, where closers seem to come and go day and night, the San Diego Padres have stood as a model of consistency. For 16 years, Trevor Hoffman closed the door on opponents to the tune of Hells Bells, before giving way to Heath Bell’s three-season reign, until current closer Huston Street took over the ninth inning duties in 2012.
Street will enter 2014 entrenched as the team’s ninth inning man again, but whether or not he remains in that position all year may be less of a sure thing than it seems. Let’s dive in.
This is a post about small sample sizes and luck, terms that get tossed around so much these days that we may have lost sight of their meaning. It’s also, I suppose, about Will Venable.
Venable kinda sorta broke out in 2013, which Robert J. Baumann covered earlier this week here. But the player inspired more thoughts, so here we are.