ARLINGTON, Texas — With not much left to fight for with the final month of the season right around the corner, the Texas Rangers began their duty as spoiler (whether they knew it or not) against the American League Central-leading Cleveland Guardians over the weekend.
Off reports that Jacob deGrom had a successful rehab outing at Double-A Frisco, while Max Scherzer was scratched from his, the Rangers are looking to stay formidable through the last stretch of the season and give both of their injured veterans a chance to pitch again this season.
Against the Guardians, Texas was able to score more than their season average with five runs apiece in each of the first two games, something they hadn’t done consecutively for two weeks and only six times overall in August. Unfortunately for them, only one of those outputs was worthy of a win and in the finale, they fell back into their season-long rut with just two runs.
Game 129: Texas 5, Cleveland 3 (W: Eovaldi, 9-7, L: Bibee, 10-6, Sv: Yates, 23)
Game 130: Texas 5, Cleveland 13 (W: Lively, 11-8, L: Gray, 5-5)
Game 131: Texas 2, Cleveland 4 (W: Boyd, 1-0, L: Bradford, 4-2, Sv: Clase, 38)
The bulldog bites back
Nathan Eovaldi, the consummate competitor, had his work cut out for him against the Guardians in the opener. Against a team that tends to see a lot of pitches and spoil them with two strikes, Eovaldi was able to complete six innings while allowing three runs, the minimum requirement for a quality start.
The outing was good enough to rack up his first win in his last four tries, as the Rangers’ offense had a surprisingly good day to score more than the opposition. Eovaldi, despite a month-long stint on the injured list, has been a stalwart starter for Texas; even if the Rangers don’t have a spot to play for down the stretch, the 34-year old Eovaldi is entering free agency after the season again.
Whether the World Series-clinching winner continues his tenure in Texas or goes on his journey elsewhere, his “bulldog” mentality in games is something that the Rangers have grown accustomed to relying on.
Saturday evening massacre
Five runs from the Rangers’ offense sounds like a godsend at this point and it was good enough in the opener for a victory. In Saturday’s contest? Not so much. When a 1-0 or 2-0 deficit sounds like an insurmountable mountain for Texas on some nights, five runs should, logically, be enough to land in the win column more often than not.
But after a win on Friday, another five runs wasn’t good enough on Saturday. While making his first start since July 23, Jon Gray didn’t have anything remotely close to his best stuff, and the middle relief out of the Rangers’ bullpen was on full mop-up duty.
Gray was making his first start since coming back from injury that saw him leave a start on July 28 before he’d thrown a pitch. He had made a bullpen appearance earlier in the week as something of a tune-up, but command issues resulted in a lot of hard-hit balls in the blowout loss.
Gray would admit to the media afterwards that he didn’t have enough in the tank to complete three innings. On top of a three-run homer that Gray allowed, reliever Grant Anderson coughed up three solo home runs. Whether it was the Guardians’ bats that were zoned in or the pitching that was zoned out, it was a forgettable game in an increasingly forgettable season for the Rangers.
PFP follies
The difference in the finale, a game in which the Guardians won 4-2 to take the series, were two pitcher throwing errors. Ironically, when a pitcher makes an error that leads to a run, it is still marked as an unearned run on their box score. Make no mistake, though, the two errors that Cody Bradford and Jose Leclerc committed, both throwing errors, led to runs that both Bradford and Leclerc would say they absolutely earned.
A throwing error by Bradford in the first led to Steven Kwan advancing to 3rd base and scoring on a sacrifice fly. It spoiled an otherwise exceptional outing by Bradford, who only allowed one other run, via a solo home run, while completing six innings of work.
Leclerc, meanwhile, put two runners on in the bottom of the seventh and an errant pickoff throw allowed Jhonkensy Noel to trot down the line from third and score what was, at the time, an insurance run. Folks will crack wise about a pitcher’s inability to throw to any base besides home being one of the most inexplicable phenomena in baseball, but the two gaffes in the finale cost the Rangers the runs that made up the final two-run deficit.
Texas has now lost nine of the last ten series. No matter how impressive your lineup and roster look on paper, if no aspect of your club is contributing consistently, the losses will begin to stack up. As August nears completion, the Rangers are looking more like their next opponents – the league-worst Chicago White Sox – than defending champions.
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