ARLINGTON, Texas — The Texas Rangers and Tampa Bay Rays, the two teams with the best records in baseball, met for the first time in 2023 over the weekend and slugged it out. After three games, the Rays made it clear that the Rangers aren’t quite ready to be called baseball’s best team.
The series represented a good checkpoint – it’s a third of the way into the season, enough time for both teams to know what they’re dealing with, and leaving enough time for them to duke it out throughout the rest of the summer for American League supremacy.
For Tampa Bay, they kept on rolling as winners of seven of eight. For Texas, a win in the middle game of the series allowed them to come away from the weekend feeling like they can be competitive against the league’s juggernaut.
- Game 62: Texas 3, Tampa Bay 8 (W: Glasnow, 1-0, L: Heaney, 4-4)
- Game 63: Texas 8, Tampa Bay 4 (W: Eovaldi, 9-2, L: Bradley, 4-3)
- Game 64: Texas 3, Tampa Bay 7 (W: McClanahan, 10-1, L: Perez, 6-2)
Rays on Paredes
The series opener wasn’t so much the Texas Rangers against the Tampa Rays as it was Leody Taveras versus Issac Paredes. The last time Paredes had enjoyed a multi-hit game was a three-hit effort against the Los Angeles Dodgers back on May 28. Between then and Friday’s contest against Texas, Paredes had gone 2-for-22 over seven games.
Paredes picked the opener to emphatically break out of a mild slump and have another explosive offensive game. Paredes smacked a run-scoring double and a three-run home run off of Rangers’ starter Andrew Heaney.
To add insult to injury, Paredes took reliever Spencer Howard, making his season debut, deep as well to drive in another two runs. Ultimately, Paredes drove in a career-high six runs during his three-hit game.
Meanwhile, Rangers’ center fielder Leody Taveras tried to keep up with the Paredes’ pace. Texas collected three hits during the entire contest. Taveras had two of them, both long home runs – unfortunately for Texas, unlike Paredes’ homers, both of them came with no one on base.
Josh Jung had the other hit; it too was a solo home run, coming when the game was well out of reach. Without the influence of Paredes, the score was 3-2 in favor of Texas despite them managing just three hits, but Paredes-aided Tampa Bay would go on to win 8-3 to hand the Rangers back-to-back losses for the first time since May 5.
Regression held at bay
After scoring just three runs over two games and going 18 consecutive innings without plating a run into Saturday’s game, there may have been some concern that the Rangers’ offense was coming back down to earth.
Those concerns were alleviated by the time Travis Jankowski made a leaping catch just before the warning track to end an 8-4 Texas victory which evened the series.
The offense was led, again, by the top two names in the lineup with Marcus Semien and Corey Seager helping to remind everyone which team leads baseball in runs scored.
Semien, who saw his career-best 25-game hitting streak end on Wednesday before going 0-for-4 in the series opener, notched two hits and scored a run.
It is possibly noteworthy, if not merely coincidental that in the two games that Semien went hitless, the Rangers sputtered. When the second baseman had productive plate appearances, the Rangers managed eight runs on 12 hits.
Meanwhile, Seager produced a highlight game. The $325 million shortstop, who missed 31 games with a hamstring injury, has been trying to make up for lost time ever since he returned from the injured list.
In Saturday’s contest, Seager had his first career five-hit game while driving in four and falling just a triple short of the cycle. He’s now hitting .352 with an OPS over 1.000 and has more RBIs than games played. That kind of production is infectious and has translated up and down the lineup, as the Rangers showed that they’re capable of pouring it on against the Rays.
Persistent problems for Perez
At this juncture in the season, with most starters having gone through 13 games, it’s fair to be able to read into what you can expect from each. For Martin Perez, it’s been a season of ups and downs, a true roller coaster. In this case, the series finale against the top team in the majors, the Rangers and Perez experienced a low.
The 2022 All-Star Perez languished through just 3 ⅓ innings, inducing soft contact, but as it goes for a pitcher that induces soft contact, a lot of them found holes and found outfield grass. By the time Perez tried to stop the bleeding, Tampa Bay started hitting him harder. Ultimately the Rays got 10 hits off of lefty and seven runs crossed the plate.
While Bruce Bochy tried to get Perez through four innings with Texas only down one run through three innings, Perez aimed a changeup for the outside corner against Rays’ superstar shortstop Wander Franco. Franco rifled the pitch over the left field wall for a three-run homer to all but put the nail in Texas’ coffin.
Even though the Rangers showed some impressive signs of offensive life against the pitcher with the lowest ERA in the League, Perez allowing that 4-3 deficit to go three runs deeper was all that Tampa Bay’s starter Shane McClanahan would need.
With Perez untenable, the bullpen came in and tried to give the Rangers a fighting chance. Jose Leclerc, Grant Anderson, and Yerry Rodriguez combined to shoulder 4 ⅔ innings, striking out five and allowing just two hits. There were no walks issued by the relievers, a big step in the right direction for the bullpen arms.
All in all, nobody can say that the Rangers simply rolled over and let the Rays beat them. But there are clearly some things that will need to be fixed, perhaps sooner rather than later with these two teams meeting soon after the All-Star break.
Can Perez and Heaney step up and be more consistent as the left-handed options in the rotation? Can the offense get it done on nights where Semien and Seager are quiet? Are the Rangers starting to figure things out with their bullpen or is there more tooling to be done?
These are just some of the things for Texas to consider as they head back to Arlington bruised but not broken following the clash of AL titans.
Do you think the Rangers did enough in Tampa Bay to show that they’re for real? Share your thoughts with Matt on Twitter @FisherWritesMLB.
