ARLINGTON, Texas — Returning to the scene from where it all began last October, the Texas Rangers earned a second consecutive series victory to start the season after taking two of three against the Tampa Bay Rays, but it wasn’t without a high price.
Monday’s opener was carried by hot-hitting sophomore third baseman Josh Jung, until a hit by pitch in the ninth inning soured the mood as it was revealed that the All-Star starter required surgery for a fractured wrist that will cost him much of the season’s first half.
The 2023 Rangers thrived under adverse conditions on their way to winning a World Series. Adversity arrived early for them in 2024, so they will need to show that they can traverse the pitfalls of another year. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
- Game 4: Rangers 9, Rays 3 (W: Dunning, 1-0, L: Pepiot, 0-1)
- Game 5: Rangers 2, Rays 5 (W: Eflin, 1-1, L: Heaney, 0-1)
- Game 6: Rangers 4, Rays 1 (W: Eovaldi, 1-0, L: Civale, 1-1)
Dunning dazzles
The final pitching line for Dane Dunning’s 2024 debut looks pretty average in the box score. Dunning gave up three runs on three hits with four walks, two homers allowed and two batters hit by pitch in 6 ⅓ innings. However, those three runs didn’t come until Dunning’s final frame, as he started the inning with a 6-0 lead and gave up a solo homer to Richie Palacios and then a two-run shot to Jose Siri.
Until he started running out of gas, Dunning was cruising, facing just one above the minimum through four innings, entering the seventh allowing just one hit, working his way out of any self-induced trouble via walks in the middle innings, and striking out seven over the course of his outing with rare swing-and-miss stuff.
Though he was fatigued by the end of his outing, it was exactly the kind of performance that the Rangers were hoping to see after Dunning’s successful 2023 season.
Jung and done
With the infusion of rookies to the lineup this year, it feels easy to forget that Jung was just starting his second full season of Major League action as he already feels like a veteran on the team. Plagued by injuries in the season leading up the last year, Jung looked poised to take the Rookie of the Year award in 2023. Then in August, a sharp line drive took Jung out until the last couple weeks of the season, fracturing his thumb.
Going into the season, Jung strained his calf while fielding routine grounders in spring training, but he was ready to go for Opening Day. The 26-year old was on fire during the opening series against Chicago, going 4-for-13 with a double, a triple, a homer and three runs scored with two RBI. He hit the ground running in the first inning of the opener against Tampa with the Rangers’ first three-run homer of the season, contributing in some way to Texas’ first six runs scored in the game.
Then came that fateful ninth inning where Rays pitcher Phil Maton hit Evan Carter, then Adolis Garcia, then came way inside to Jung, who was deemed to have swung in the act of getting out of the way of a pitch. The pitch hit him on the wrist and he was removed from the game and later was off to Arizona to have surgery that was ultimately discovered to be more extensive than expected.
Nothing will halt momentum more than an injury, but the Rangers survived these challenges last season. They will have to prove that they can do it again as they await their young third baseman’s return.
Hell for Heaney
It’s not that Andrew Heaney was pitching terribly in his 2024 debut. He struck out seven throughout the night, fought against some stubborn Rays’ hitters, and allowed just one earned run. He probably could have gone another two innings, which is further than he went in any start during the second half of last year. But in the bottom of the fifth, Jared Walsh, filling in for the oblique-injured Nathaniel Lowe, dropped a pop-up with two outs, resulting in Yandy Diaz reaching first.
Yes, Heaney needs to make pitches to get out of trouble, but there’s no denying that he should have been out of that inning. Heaney ended up at 90 pitches and was pulled after 4 ⅔ innings. Yerry Rodriguez, who did well in his season debut against Chicago (two scoreless innings), allowed an RBI single and then a three-run homer after Walsh’s drop. The four unearned runs were more than Texas allowed in any one game all last season.
With the Ranger bats unable to get going against Zach Eflin in their first game without Jung, Texas’ fate was sealed in Tuesday’s contest, making Heaney a hard luck loser. Despite pitching quite well, Heaney’s career record fell to 0-7 against the Rays.
Nasty Nate, Easy Evo
In Nathan Eovaldi’s second start of the season, facing a formidable Rays’ offense, the Rangers’ ace kept up the momentum from his previous start.
The righty with the compact delivery threw in a wrinkle against the team he beat to claim the Wild Card series last October. Eovaldi’s split-finger fastball, typically a pitch he throws around a quarter of the time, was utilized 63% of Eovaldi’s 103 pitches.
With the splitter working, Eovaldi shined. On the whole, Evo tossed seven scoreless innings while striking out eight, including three swinging strikeouts in his final frame. He effectively outdueled the Rays’ second-best starter, Aaron Civale, and gave his team some future-minded depth and length as the Rangers won the finale 4-1.
With the bullpen having relieved Heaney after just 4 ⅔ innings on Tuesday, Eovaldi was able to give most of the bullpen an extra day as they head back home and take on their in-state rivals Houston in the first AL West matchup of the year.
Languishing Leclerc
Often you’ll hear a manager say that a hitter just needs to work through it to break out of a funk or that a pitcher just needs to get back out there and forget a bad outing. Jose Leclerc, who saved all but one game for the Rangers in the postseason, is asked to get the hardest outs at the end of games as the closer, so he doesn’t exactly have the luxury of everyday outings to “work through it.”
Leclerc, having given up four runs in the series finale against the Cubs just on Sunday, needed to find his way back into Bochy’s good graces. Leclerc’s biggest issue right now is confidence and control.
In Wednesday’s finale, Leclerc looked better, but also gave back one of the runs scored in the top half of the final inning of the series, an inning that Texas entered leading just 1-0. Had they not scored insurance runs, Leclerc could have been facing another blown save. He finished, allowing two hits and eventually closing out the game even as everyone held their breath.
Leclerc will go through patches where his command is spotty, just like he did last year. But how he carried the bullpen in October shows what he is capable of. Is this just a hiccup until he gets into “mid-season” form? Bochy now has a few different veterans to turn to in high-leverage situations – for right now, at any rate. It would be nice to see Leclerc work through his kinks early on, though, and establish himself as a dominant, trusted closer for more than a magical month.
With another series win under their belts, the Rangers head back home from Florida to welcome in the Houston Astros for their first battle since the epic ALCS last October beginning on Friday night in Arlington.
Do you think the Rangers will be able to thrive without Josh Jung? Share your thoughts with Matt on Twitter @FisherWritesMLB.
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