SURPRISE, Ariz. – Elvis hasn’t left the building.
But no doubt the building has left him.
“Time is flying,” Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus says in the team’s spring training clubhouse last week. “Just yesterday I was a 22-year-old about to win a World Series. Now I’m 30 and … it’s just different.”
On a team void of stars and thin on hope, Andrus is the Rangers’ de facto leader in 2019. Entering his 11th season, he is the longest-tenured player. He remembers the nauseating disappointments in 2011 and 2014. He sees the dense jungle of the season ahead.
Where once there was Michael Young and Adrian Beltre, now there is the affable Venezuelan that has been playing professional baseball since he was 16.
“I’m the old man,” he laughs. “You hang around long enough and people say ‘Hey, it’s your team now’.”
With Beltre’s retirement into the Rangers’ Hall of Fame, Andrus sheepishly takes the torch as the Rangers’ elder. He’ll be the voice to explain tough losses. The go-to quote when the media seeks the pulse of the clubhouse. The steadfast shoulder new manager Chris Woodward will lean on, and then lean on some more.
Because this season – this lonnnnnnng season – Andrus might just be The Lone Ranger.
No away around it, the Rangers are going to absorb some level of suck. The only drama will be whether their failure is a respectable 94-loss suck, or a record-setting 106-loss suck.
Last Friday they played the Chicago White Sox at Surprise Stadium and the ol’ “Hope springs eternal” battle cry was already being tested. Delino DeShields has blue hair and Willie Calhoun has dropped some weight. Nomar Mazara shows flashes. As does Ronald Guzman at first base. But aside from Dollar Dog Night, the ageless Dot Race, Rougned Odor’s numerous fashion eccentricities and the fireworks set off by Joey Gallo’s mesmerizing exit-velocity bombs, what are fans genuinely excited about in 2019?
Mike Minor is the Opening Day starter, most dicey since Tanner Scheppers in 2014 or maybe even all the way back to Ryan Drese in 2005. Jose Leclerc is the closer. Drew Smyly is the third starter. The bullpen will include pedestrians such as Chris Martin, Zach McAllister and Jesse Chavez. Instead of Beltre, former Indians and Mets castoff Asdrubal Cabrera will man the hot corner.
So rebuilding are the Rangers – choosing to sacrifice and merely bargain shop at the major league level while bolstering its farm system – that their only player to make an All-Star team in the last six years is designated hitter Shin-Soo Choo, a guy that hit only .217 with three homers in the final 56 games after making his 2018 appearance.
This is the year before the year. Or maybe even the year before the year, before the year. Even their stadium – Globe Life Field – will be a lame duck.
As the acknowledged face of the franchise, Andrus says all the right things about a season in which the bar is set irrationally low at just don’t break the franchise record for losses, set at 105 by the 1973 squad.
“Really? Ah, come on,” says Andrus, minutes after roping a single to center field to lead off the fourth inning and then calling it a day. “Your expectations are difficult. It’s annoying.”
Veteran experience be damned, Andrus himself is one of the question marks.
After a 2017 in which he hit .297 with 20 homers and 88 RBI, he nosedived last season. He suffered a broken arm in April when hit by a 96-mph fastball, went on the disabled list for the first time in his career and never found his rhythm. He played in only 97 games, his average dropping 50 points and his OPS a full 100.
Last year was the broken arm. This year it might be a broken heart.
Because gone is Andrus’ baseball soulmate, Beltre. They joked with each other. They goofed off and made otherwise routine pop-ups must-see-TV. They pulled, prodded and poked one another into bigger smiles and better stats.
“I’m not gonna lie, it’s tough,” Andrus says. “Especially here at spring training when it gets kind of boring. We kept each other on our toes and woke up. But he’s on to the next chapter and I have to move on also. I wish he could play until he was 50, but he’s done enough.”
Andrus’ resilience and optimism are the least of the Rangers’ myriad problems. He survived 2011, when he was on the field and within one strike – twice – of winning the World Series. He endured 2014, when his two seventh-inning errors turned a late lead into an excruciating loss to the Blue Jays in Game 5 of an ALDS the Rangers led 2-0. And he didn’t exercise the opt-out clause in his eight-year, $120 million contract, foregoing free agency to stick with a team perhaps headed for the worst season in its history.
Bad news: The Rangers haven’t won a playoff game in five years and Las Vegas oddsmakers project their 2019 record to be 71-91.
Good news: The Astros voluntarily underwent a similar reconstruction project in Houston from 2011-13. In those three years they lost a whopping 106, 107 and 111 games, but came out the other side winning a World Series in 2017.
“I’m not saying we are the favorites or something, but I never like to think we’re gonna finish in last place,” Andrus says. “I believe we can have a great team. Our offense is gonna score runs and, if our pitching stays healthy, we’re gonna surprise you and a lot of folks. We’re playing with chips on our shoulder. You media guys are doing us a favor, you know that?”
Elvis has not left the re-building.
