Texas Rangers: 3 takeaways from an ugly four-game sweep in Houston

Well that kinda sucked. The Texas Rangers failed to record a single win during their four-game set against the Houston Astros, getting swept straight out of town in rather commanding fashion.

Needless to say, Astros fans were pretty pumped up about the whole ordeal:

https://twitter.com/astrosCTH/status/1394041215818076171?s=20

Following said brutal sweep, the Rangers are now winless in their last six games, and things aren’t set to get all that much easier with the Yankees up next in the schedule.

Some takeaways from the past four losses:

The Houston Astros are pretty good.

As much as it may pain you to admit it, the Astros are genuinely one of the better teams in baseball at the moment. Today’s win earlier this afternoon puts them seven games above .500, and they’re 8-2 in their last ten.

If it wasn’t for the Athletics’ hot start to the 2021 season, Houston would be sitting rather comfortably atop the American League West.

The Astros have sustained some pretty big losses over the past few seasons, both to their physical roster and to their coaching staff, yet they remain capable of pumping out strong performances.

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Zack Greinke and Lance McCullers Jr. are both very strong top-of-the-rotation arms, and the offense keeps on rolling despite the departure of George Springer this past offseason.

While losing four of four should still be considered unacceptable (the Rangers really should’ve stolen at least one game), it’s worth highlighting the caliber of team they were up against in this specific instance.

Texas Rangers drop 4/4 to the Houston Astros.

The end goal is of course to dethrone the Astros in the AL West one day down the road, but in the meantime, they’re still the top dogs.

Some questions emerging in the pitching staff.

During the early stages of the 2021 season, the Texas Rangers pitching staff was exceeding expectations, performing far better than what some of the initial projection models had them doing.

During this past series to the Astros, it looks like the team’s staff collectively started to come back down to earth.

Mike Foltynewicz was actually half decent during his start on Thursday, but Friday’s game was a complete and utter disaster. The Rangers allowed ten runs to cross the plate, with Wes Benjamin, Brett de Geus, and Hyeon-jong Yang all really struggling with their command. Yang faltering in the manner that he did was particularly concerning, as he had stacked up a few solid outings for Texas prior to Friday’s loss.

The woes continued onto Saturday, as Dane Dunning lasted just four innings during his own respective start, allowing four runs to cross the plate before turning things over to the bullpen. Dunning allowed ten batters to reach base as well, only striking out three in the process.

Dunning’s ceiling is still rather high when it comes to his longterm potential with the Rangers, but Saturday’s poor outing happened nevertheless.

Kyle Gibson was pretty great during his start on Sunday (we’ll get to him on the next slide), but the bullpen failed to keep it together, as Joely Rodriguez allowed four runs to score in the 8th inning, costing the Rangers a shot at spoiling the sweep.