" The Rangers arrived at a couple of important realizations during their weekend retreat to the Sweat Lodge in Arlington:

• After some withering road losses to the AL's best teams, the Rangers realized they could stand toe-to-toe with AL East leader Tampa Bay, which owns the best record in baseball.

• The clock is officially ticking on Rich Harden's time in the starting rotation.

The Rangers won the first two games of the series. Once with a powerful comeback and once with an artful pitching exhibition. Only Harden's continued inability to get deep into a game kept the Rangers from sweeping the Rays.

In what might elsewhere be described as torture, Harden kept his teammates and the sweltering crowd of 26,932 sitting for more than two hours in 93-degree temperature while he threw 111 pitches in five innings. The game took 4:06, making it the third-longest home game in Rangers history and the longest in 10 years.

Anybody who walked away thinking Harden had pitched well was promptly treated for heat exposure.

Among the potentially afflicted: Harden himself.

"I felt pretty good," Harden said, echoing a line he's used after a slew of five-inning-or-fewer starts this season. "It's still not going the way I want it to go; I made a couple of mistakes. But I threw more strikes. I got ahead of hitters."

Harden and manager Ron Washington said the pitcher has made "significant" progress since the start of the season.

"But," Washington added, "he's got to make even more significant progress."

Or he's going to lose his spot in the rotation. It's that simple. Tommy Hunter pitched a complete game Saturday as a replacement for Derek Holland.

Holland, on the disabled list with shoulder tendinitis, has re-started a throwing program and might be ready to go in a couple of weeks. If so, the Rangers will have to yank somebody out of the rotation. Right now, the eyes of Texas are on Harden, his 5.34 ERA and his major league-worst 19.9 pitches per inning.

At one point, it looked like Harden was making slow, but steady progress. But that point culminated with his only seven-inning outing of the year at Oakland in early May.

And while Harden is throwing a higher percentage of strikes since that "breakout" game, he's also throwing more pitches per inning. Batters are fouling off pitches at such a record pace that bankruptcy judge D. Michael Lynn might have to grant the Rangers a budget exemption just to have enough baseballs on hand.

Harden said he thinks hitters are fouling off his changeups more than in past years. That might mean his changeup – his strikeout pitch – is not as sharp as last year.

Or that the speed differential between his fastball and changeup is so small that hitters can look for one pitch and still foul off the other. "