<|endoftext|> Cinco! Chamesh! That works out to a K-BB ratio of 15.4 that is the best in the majors by a landslide meets a mudslide meets a slide guitar meets an electric guitar meets an electric eel. Speaking of electric eels, here's how shocking Ryu's ratio is: The next-closest guy is Max Scherzer, whose ratio of 6.6 isn't even half of Ryu's. If Ryu keeps this up, he'll shatter the single-season record of 11.6, currently held by Phil Hughes. Where I come from, we call that impressive.
Miller: What do Yu Darvish, Luis Castillo, Robbie Ray, Julio Teheran and Trevor Bauer have in common? They all have higher walk rates this year, against all batters, than Ryu has in three-ball counts. (So do a bunch of other starters, by the way.) And with runners in scoring position, Ryu is allowing a .037/.054/.037 line. So when things have gotten a little rough -- runners on, or a bad count -- he has made the pitch he needed to make.
Schoenfield: OK, so Ryu is a strike-throwing robot. Here's a fun non-strike-throwing robot fact: Nolan Ryan had 26 separate games in 1977 when he walked at least five batters. Yet he still managed a 2.93 ERA in those games. Maybe Ryan was a robot. After all, imagine how many pitches he must have thrown in some of those games: 9 IP, 7 H, 9 BB, 13 SO; 11 IP, 9 H, 7 BB, 11 SO; 10 IP, 6 H, 5 BB, 19 SO; 9 IP, 5 H, 8 BB, 12 SO. And so on. He did this all season. I guess that's my point about Ryu: He's been the anti-Nolan Ryan. And I'll take the anti-Nolan Ryan.
The Rangers -- who are in Cincinnati this weekend (1 p.m. ET Sunday, ESPN+) -- are one of the most pleasant surprises of the season. Will they be able to stay in wild-card contention through September?
Matz: Can they stay in wild-card contention? Sure, along with half the league. Will they win the wild card? Only if they continue to play 56% of their games against the Mariners, Orioles and Royals, as they've done over the past month (they're 12-3 against that hole-y troika during that stretch). For what it's worth, Texas faces Seattimore City just 13 times over its final 94 games. They don't call 'em the dog days for nothin'.
Miller: The Rangers took an extremely risky strategy into this season, betting on recent Tommy John-ers Shelby Miller, Drew Smyly and Edinson Volquez in their rotation. It worked out even better than they planned: Those three have thrown 91 innings, allowed 91 runs and somehow caused the rest of the team to wildly outperform all expectations. The Rangers have, in the past few weeks, remade that broken rotation on the fly, and it's sort of working. I could see them winning 84 games, for sure. But the three teams they're holding off in the wild-card race -- Cleveland, Oakland and Boston, all just a couple of games back -- won 91, 97 and 108 games last season, respectively, and I can't really see all three of them collapsing to 83 or worse this year.
Schoenfield: What they said! Look, with four American League teams on pace for 100 losses and the Mariners trending in that direction, the season is set up for a surprise team. Somebody has to win some of these games. Aside from Texas' rotation concerns, I'm not sure this is a playoff-caliber offense, and that's even without assuming regression from Joey Gallo and Hunter Pence. The Rangers are second in the AL in runs (through Wednesday), but fourth in batting average, sixth in OBP and fourth in slugging. They've hit .281/.365/.508 with runners in scoring position, so they've hit well in the clutch. They need that to continue, but you don't want to have to bet on that to continue.
Writers' choice: What are you most looking forward to this weekend?
Matz: Baltimore lefty John Means has been good enough that the O's -- yes, those O's -- actually have two guys who deserve to be in the All-Star conversation (Trey Mancini being the more obvious one). A 26-year-old rookie, Means didn't crack the rotation until mid-April, so he's a teensy bit shy of qualifying for the ERA title. But if he did qualify, his 2.60 ERA would