PHILADELPHIA — The beatings continued and it’s unsure where the morale of the team is right now.
After dropping their 4th straight series and continuing to see the Mariners pull away with the division, it can be easy to see why the Texas Rangers could be down in spirits. But the path to repeating a championship run is never easy. The problem is that right now, it’s not that fun to watch either.
- Game 49: Texas 2, Philadelphia 5 (W: Suarez, 9-0, L: Gray, 2-2, Sv: Alvarado, 9)
- Game 50: Texas 4, Philadelphia 11 (W: Strahm, 3-0, L: Dunning, 3-3)
- Game 51: Texas 2, Philadelphia 5 (W: Wheeler, 6-3, L: Heaney, 0-6, Sv: Hoffman, 4)
Dunning Derailed
Seeing Dane Dunning return to the rotation is a good sign in the right direction for the Rangers. Unfortunately, the return of the bespectacled righty to the pitching staff was soured by the drubbing Texas took at the hands of Philadelphia.
Dunning threw 74 pitches over the course of just 3.1 innings. For a pitcher who suffered a rotator cuff strain and did not take part in a rehab outing before rejoining the big league club, it was about as well as you could expect. The defense didn’t help him (more on that later), but Dunning didn’t have a lot of luck putting the dangerous Phillies lineup away. He gave up 5 total runs, but 3 were earned due to errors, surrendered 4 hits, and struck out 4. It’s a step in the right direction, not just for Dunning, but for the Rangers as a whole.
Costly Errors
Dunning’s return was spoiled, in part, by two extremely costly errors – and one was Dunning’s own doing. The Rangers had a 2-0 lead going into the 2nd, the second straight night they had the first lead of the game. The first batter of the 2nd, Alec Bohm, hit a ball that deflected off Dunning to shortstop Corey Seager. Seager would throw to first, but Nathaniel Lowe, the American League’s Gold Glove first baseman, closed his glove a little too soon and did not catch the ball.
Several batters later, Brandon Marsh attempted to steal 2nd, but got caught off the base by Dunning. Dunning would throw towards 2nd but threw the ball away, which sent Nick Castellanos home to tie the game. It’s the second game in a week where the Rangers played very uncharacteristically sloppy defense. All told, the Rangers committed 4 errors in the middle game. The Phillies scored 11 runs. Only 5 on the night were earned.
For a team with as many Gold Gloves as the Rangers have, this performance is not a welcome sight.
Bad Pieces Bad
The trio of Jose Leclerc, David Robertson and Kirby Yates, outside of a couple of bad outings, have been very good consistently, especially in the month of May. But when the team is failing to give them opportunities to protect leads, their effectiveness and usefulness gets overshadowed.
The Rangers used Cole Winn, Jake Latz, Jonathan Hernandez, Yerry Rodriguez and Grant Anderson in the first two games of this series. They gave up a combined 9 runs over those 2 games. The frequency at which those relievers have been used results in a bullpen that ranks dead last in the Majors with a 5.14 ERA. Using them sporadically, or as a bridge to winning pieces, might result in a better look for an already beleaguered bullpen, but the real problem is that the offense isn’t giving the pitching staff anything to work with.
Dead Bats
Ask any pitcher and they’ll tell you that pitching with a comfortable lead allows one to pitch more freely; the margin for error is greater and the need to be perfect is far diminished.
In the last 10 games, encompassing the Phillies, Angels, Guardians and one game of the Rockies’ series, the Rangers have been outscored by their opposition 53-24. That averages to 2.4 runs per game over their last 10 games. Even the sharpest pitching is going to find themselves hard-pressed to be consistently perfect if they have only 2 runs of error to play with. When you have to allow some other members of the bullpen to pitch, members that can’t consistently get outs for you, you end up with a 2-8 record over those last 10 games.
It’s not for a lack of hits either; Texas racked up 67 hits in this time frame. They even hit 12 homers during that time. But they also averaged 7.3 strikeouts per game. Texas isn’t stringing together the hits and they’re not able to put up big innings. With runners in scoring position, the Rangers went 11-for-64 - .172. That’s abysmal for a team that, for most of last year, led the Majors in this category.
Texas now travels to face another competitive team in the Minnesota Twins, who are third in a tough AL Central. In pitcher-friendly Target Field, Texas will have to find different ways to manufacture runs – but those ways seem to be eluding the team as well.
