Rangers recall Reks, option Howard

The Texas Rangers recalled outfielder Zach Reks before tonight’s game. To make room for him on the active roster, the Rangers optioned pitcher Spencer Howard to AAA Round Rock.

This is a bit of an add move, at least as far as Reks coming up is concerned. The 28 year old left handed hitting corner outfielder was acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers in November, and has put up an 802 OPS in 16 games for Round Rock. I’m not sure if there’s a position player banged up, or if the team simply decided that Howard was going down and so Reks was as fine of a holder of a roster spot as anyone for the time being.

With rosters dropping to 26 players on Monday, two players will have to be sent down or otherwise removed from the roster at that point. Reks would presumably go back to around Rock then, though who knows, maybe someone will have to go on the injured list or someone else will be sent down instead. Life is a mystery.

As for Howard, he earned a rotation spot out of spring training, and has had three disappointing outings with an injured list stint for a blister mixed in. The beats say the plan is for to build back up to a starters workload in AAA and then hopefully return soon. With Jon Gray about to return, however, and Glenn Otto having performed well in his first two starts, Howard was also seemingly in jeopardy of getting squeezed out of his rotation spot for the time being anyway.

Also, I thought this post went up yesterday, but apparently it didn’t. Sorry.