Texas Rangers: 5 Issues affecting the Texas Rangers

#3 Issue Affecting the Texas Rangers: Defensive Lapses

One of the strengths of this team for most of this season has been its defense. They rarely allowed teams to take extra bases, were not an error-prone team, and played sound fundamental baseball. That has kind of slipped over the last six games. It is not like they are booting the ball all over the field or making embarrassing mistakes. It is mainly just balls not being caught cleanly, dropped on the transfer, throws from the outfield short hopping infielders, and just minor stuff that is leading to major momentum shifts.

Marcus Semien had a second inning error on Friday that led to the Rays scoring a run and Heaney having to throw extra pitches that inning. On Monday night, Garcia caught a deep fly ball and the short hop on the throw to Semien skipped away allowing a run to score. That was followed up by a wild pitch from Dunning that allowed another run to score. On Tuesday at a critical moment White got a ground ball that looked like it could be an inning ending double-play. Semien fielded it, Seager caught it, and then went to turn and dropped the ball. That allowed Ohtani to score on the play.

That does not include a couple of players dropping the ball on transfers. It may not have caused damage or is recorded as an error, but it does show a lack of attention to detail. The quality of competition has increased and with that, the margin of error for this team decreases.