The improbable downfalls of J.P. Arencibia and the Texas Rangers
The Texas Rangers season is, for all intents and purposes, over. They claim the worst record in baseball thanks to injury woes that must be seen to be believed.
The Rangers’ plan of action isn’t as simple as make this year’s team worse to make next year’s club better, though it might take on that form for the time being. Trading relief pitchers depletes the talent on hand, but the Rangers are in a fortunate position.
They have more than enough prospect capital to worm their way into a big trade, gearing up for a return to contention with a fresh start in 2015.
But the 2014 team is worse, and playing J.P. Arencibia at first base is a great way to make any team worse.
Arencibia was the starting catcher for the Toronto Blue Jays for three years before he was waived following the 2013 season. A productive power hitter through his career, Arencibia’s offense set records for futility as the rigors of catching every day took its toll.
After struggling enough to earn a demotion to Triple-A for the better part of two months, the Rangers recalled Arencibia to start the second half. It just so happens that he makes his big league return in the same place he made his big league debut - Rogers Centre in Toronto.
The reception Arencibia gets will be interesting, as the gregarious catcher was beloved by most fans, despite his poor performance and occasionally questionable comments when asked about said poor performance.
Any angst over his perceived lack of self-awareness is misguided, of course. Kids aren’t plucked out of high school or the college ranks for their fallibility, and climbing the rungs of competitive baseball is not a journey for those who spend too much time in their own head.
It’s a game of failure by design, in addition to the war of attrition that weeds out 99 percent of all aspiring players. In his own way, Arencibia won that battle by conspiring to club 65 home runs at the big league level, a David & Goliath victory against the odds played out dozens of times every single day.
Arencibia - and dozens like him - were good enough to get to the majors and play 400 games, but the mounting evidence suggests he isn’t quite good enough to warrant inclusion in 400 more.
To be so good for so long and suddenly run up against a brick wall? To fault a player in this situation for a lack of perspective is to completely misread all the traits it took to get to that position in the first place.
The 2014 Rangers are running a similar storyline. That Texas remained so good for long is something of a miracle. For Texas to fall so far, so fast, undid so much work of Jon Daniels and their astute front office.
To reach the World Series in two consecutive seasons requires an uncanny amount of luck, planning, and everything in between. To win 90 games four years in a row and then to be on the cusp of losing 100, that takes an equal but opposite confluence of events as that which brings a team one strike away from the World Series title, only to miss.
The Rangers will be back. Either their army of child soldiers will come of age together or they’ll take on more money to raise the floor and potentially add impact talent right away, be it in the winter or at this trade deadline.
As for J.P. Arencibia, perhaps he can be born again as a big league first baseman. A respite from the beating his hands and legs take a big league catcher can perhaps unlock the power that made him a first-round draft pick and record-holder at nearly every level of baseball.
Players don’t get the same opportunity to reload and start again like the teams that employ them. Playing out the string for a woebegone team in a lost season might be his last chance to prove he belongs, an outcome neither party could have predicted just a few years ago.