Rangers Roundup: Impressively Bad
You're not going to win if you don't score. Or you still might. Who knows? Sports are weird.
At this point, my hands are in the air. For the first month of the Major League Baseball season, I’ve tried to remain patient with the state of the Rangers. There have been plenty of positives that have shrouded the negatives, but now that’s completely flipped. For the most part, Rangers games are more bad than good at the moment — especially this past week in Northern California.
After losing two out of three at home against the reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers — with two of those losses being shutouts — the Rangers traveled to Sacramento and San Francisco to play the homeless Athletics and the surging Giants. Both series played out fairly similarly, with the Rangers winning the opener (an 8-5 win against the A’s on Tuesday night, and a 2-0 pitching masterclass on Friday evening), but they then squandered opportunity after opportunity in the remaining games, losing both series and heading back to Arlington dejected.
It’s an epidemic. The Rangers can’t hit, and it’s starting to cost them games. It needs to be figured out soon. Preferably as soon as tonight against the Athletics.
But offense is not the only problem at the moment. Boy, all it takes is watching the last play of Sunday afternoon’s tilt in San Francisco to see the massive troubles this team is facing right now.
I don’t even have the strength (or probably even the vocabulary) to describe what occurred at Oracle Park yesterday. Just watch this disaster for yourself.
Talking about yesterday’s game extensively was not the plan heading into this Roundup. Had the Rangers pulled off the win, this edition of the Rangers Roundup probably would’ve been similar to past iterations, with me walking through the good and the bad from the last several days of Rangers baseball. That simply can’t be the case for this one, however, as the last two days in San Francisco painted an elegant (yet hideous) picture of just how poorly the team is playing.
Back-to-back 3-2 losses to the Giants, both via walk-offs, were a gut punch. It was the third walk-off defeat the Rangers suffered on the road trip. In every single one of those games, the final moments were rough to watch, but those weren’t the deciding points that ultimately sealed the Rangers’ fate. Those instances came earlier, when the team managed to get runners into scoring position and then failed to get them home. Time and time again, it happened. It became such a common occurrence over this past week that when the Rangers managed to muster enough offense to get a runner into scoring position, I knew in my heart and in my head that that player was not going to score. In almost every instance, I was correct.
Let’s quantify this a little bit. Through the first month of the season, the Rangers are hitting .224 with runners in scoring position. Honestly, not as bad as I thought. Still, it’s not good enough.
Here are some more rough statistics: Through the first month of the season, the Rangers rank 26th in the league in batting average (.223), 25th in OPS (.651), 29th in walk rate (6.2%), and — most damning of all — last in runs per game (3.11).
The brutal end to the series in San Francisco is going to be the headline, but it shouldn’t be. If the offense were even a hair better than it is right now, that catastrophic blunder isn’t a walk-off winner — it’s just a weird blip on the radar. It might not have even happened at all, with the butterfly effect and all that jazz.
I don’t have any answers, and it’s obvious that the team, coaching staff, and front office don’t seem to have any either. When Evan Grant asked Bruce Bochy about the offense after Saturday’s loss, the Rangers manager responded with the cliché that “nobody is content.” Grant asked Chris Young, Texas’ president of baseball operations, what he thought about the offensive struggles, and he reiterated that sentiment, adding that “everybody shares responsibility.”
The silver lining is that we’re just 30 games into a 162-game marathon. It’s a long season. Things can change. If they don’t, though, this season is going to be — in the words of Rangers broadcaster Dave Raymond — torture.
Some Positives, Por Favor
Enough spewing about the negatives — let’s get to some positives. Here are some quick bullet points that show everything might not be as bad as we think:
Wyatt Langford is that dude right now. He came back from his oblique injury last week and has raked ever since. He’s now slashing .344/.419/.688 (1.106 OPS) and is by far the Rangers’ best hitter at the moment (at least when Corey Seager isn’t in the lineup). People in the Rangers front office and clubhouse call him “baby Trout” for a reason. He’s got the tools to be a top-tier player in this league for years to come.
The starting pitching continues to be solid. Patrick Corbin, Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi, and Tyler Mahle all delivered good-to-great starts over the past week. If the offense had any life whatsoever, those efforts probably would’ve resulted in more victories. Alas, that’s not the world we’re living in right now. A shame.
This might sound shocking, given that two of the walk-offs this past week were directly due to defensive ineptitude, but I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen from the Rangers in the field so far this season. Adolis García made an exceptional play on Sunday afternoon where he dove for a hard-hit liner and then threw a dart to first base to double off the runner. Nick Ahmed, who’s on the team mostly for defensive purposes, put on a clinic at shortstop on Saturday. Josh Smith has also impressed wherever he’s been playing.
Rangers Sports Network has been such a breath of fresh air. It’s been so nice to turn on a Rangers game with zero hassle — which has not been the case for the past several seasons. Add on the Stars on Victory+, and DFW sports are in a great spot when it comes to broadcast access. It’s never been easier to watch the games here in the Metroplex, and that, for me, is a massive win.
Other Updates
Corey Seager suffered a strained right hamstring in Tuesday night’s win against the A’s after pulling up in pain trying to leg out an infield single. It appears the Rangers caught a break, though, with it just being a low-grade strain. The team expects him to be out about two weeks — a blessing, given how tenuous hamstring injuries can be.
Evan Carter appears to be progressing nicely in Triple-A. I don’t think he’s an option yet at the big-league level, as he still needs more consistent playing time — Round Rock has been giving him a lot of days off to manage his back — and more consistent success at the plate. But right now, things are trending up for Carter, and that’s good news in my book.
Kumar Rocker was put on the 15-day IL with a mild right shoulder impingement, which is just fancy speak for “my shoulder hurts a bit, I think I shouldn’t throw for a little while.”
Sebastian Walcott is not the answer to the Rangers’ hitting woes right now, but man, that kid can hit. Through 19 games in Frisco, Walcott is slashing .282/.409/.451 (.860 OPS) with two homers and 12 RBIs. I can’t wait to see him playing in Arlington — and at this rate, it might be sooner than any of us expected. Oh, and he’s just 19 years old, by the way.
Up Next
A date with the “Sacramento” A’s is on deck back home in Arlington. A series win here is a must. Actually, just scoring more than two runs in a game would be nice too.
Here are the pitching probables for the series:
Monday: (TEX) Patrick Corbin (2-0, 3.77 ERA) vs. (ATH) JP Sears (3-2, 3.21 ERA)
Tuesday: (TEX) Jacob deGrom (0-1, 3.33 ERA) vs. (ATH) TBD
Wednesday: (TEX) Nathan Eovaldi (2-2, 2.21 ERA) vs. (ATH) Luis Severino (1-3, 3.49 ERA)
Thursday: (TEX) Tyler Mahle (3-0, 1.14 ERA) vs. (ATH) Jeffrey Springs (3-3, 6.04 ERA)
Let’s go win a series, gosh dang it.