Dodgers @ Rangers June 15, 2015: Baseball! In Texas!

So, hey, the Rangers. The last time the Dodgers saw the Rangers was six years ago yesterday, back on June 14, 2009, when Chad Billingsley, Ramon Troncoso, and Jonathan Broxton combined to put together a 6-3 win. So yeah, it’s been a while.

	Dodgers			Rangers
	5:05 p.m.			Arlington, Tex.
CF	Pederson		RF	Choo
RF	Puig		LF	Gallo
DH	Gonzalez		DH	Fielder
2B	Kendrick		1B	Moreland
1B	Turner		SS	Andrus
LF	Ethier		2B	Odor
C	Grandal		CF	Martin
SS	Rollins		C	Chirinos
3B	Callaspo		3B	Alberto
P	Frias (P)		P	Gallardo (R)

Since then, they’ve won back-to-back American League pennants (2010, 2011), won a Wild Card (2012), had a fourth straight 90-win season (2013), and collapsed to a 95-loss 2014 in the midst of a near-historic run of injuries (2,116 games lost!). And then, 2015 got started with Yu Darvish blowing out his arm. Jurickson Profar got hurt again. Matt Harrison has been out for years, seemingly. Neftali Feliz is hurt. Derek Holland is hurt. Ross Ohlendorf is hurt. Adrian Beltre is hurt. Even Josh Hamilton made it through only 7 games in his return to town before injuring his hamstring.

And yet: Despite getting off to a dreadful 9-16 start, the Rangers have been red-hot for a month, and they’re only 2.5 games back of Houston (!) for first place. That’s largely because Prince Fielder has been having a quietly stellar comeback season, but it’s also because Nick Martinez and Wandy Rodriguez have been outpitching their peripherals, and because old friend Shawn Tolleson (tear!) has been a shutdown reliever. I’d be lying if I said I’d ever heard of third baseman Hanser Alberto — he was called up on May 28 when Beltre went down — but I can’t pretend that I’m not excited to see young masher Joey Gallo.

Anyway, now you know something about a team you don’t see very often. What about the team you do see pretty often? (Insert obligatory SNLA joke here.) What do you need to know is that I have, of course, buried the lede. You want to know why Alex Guerrero isn’t starting in a game that includes a DH. You’d think this would have been a slam dunk. It’s because… reasons, I guess:

Mattingly said Callaspo was better matchup against Gallardo than Guerrero to start at 3B, once he decided to DH Gonzalez.

— Ken Gurnick (@kengurnick) June 15, 2015

I’m not even going to look up the platoon stats, because I do not care, and because I know that Guerrero has hit both lefties and righties. I’m assuming the unspoken key here is that “Guerrero hasn’t played third in nearly a month because we don’t think he can handle it,” which, fine, I guess. But will he get the start tomorrow against rookie Chi Chi Gonzalez, who’s another righty? (If that game even gets played, because the weather forecast looks rough.) And if not, then really, what is he doing on the roster?

I feel like we have conversations about Guerrero’s playing time just about every day, and it’s getting tedious. It’s not going to get easier with Scott Van Slyke coming back, though, or Carl Crawford after that. This situation keeps getting more confusing by the day.

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