Texas Rangers: 5 Issues affecting the Texas Rangers

The Texas Rangers lost again on Tuesday night in a similar manner as to Monday's loss. The offense established a lead, failed to build onto the lead, and then the pitching staff blew the lead. The Rangers have now lost five of the last six games and are in the middle of a three-game losing streak, their second of the entire season. There is not just one reason why they are losing these games, it is a combination of things happening that are causing these losses. The Rangers need to figure out what are these issues before they can go about fixing them. I have identified five issues that I have observed in my viewing of the games over the last week.

#1 Issue Affecting the Texas Rangers: RISP Regression

The Texas Rangers have been the best offense in baseball mainly because of their absurdly high batting average with runners in scoring position(RISP). They have spent most of this season with a team batting average over .330 with RISP. All other teams are at a .287 batting average or below. Regression was to be expected, but it has really come on since June 7th. The Rangers in the last six games are 10-49 with runners in scoring position. The first two games against the Angels they are 5-29. The issue against Tampa was not many opportunities. The issue against the Angels is a failure to take advantage of the opportunities they earn.

The Rangers do not do a lot of small ball. They do not bunt, steal bases, or lately have not been moving runners. They rank near the bottom of the league with just 36 stolen bases. Their entire offensive approach relies on being able to produce base hits to score runs. Lately, those hits have not been coming from players who had been productive in that situation. Six games in a 162 game season is just a blip. It does show a need to diversify their offensive approach. They do have athletes and it might be time to give them the freedom to steal bases. That would create more run-scoring opportunities and put pressure on opposing pitching staffs.

#2 Issue Affecting the Texas Rangers: Starting Pitching Downturn

The news about Jacob deGrom was announced on Tuesday June 6th and he had elbow surgery earlier this week. He will miss the rest of the season and likely most of next season. I do believe this pitching staff was overperforming through the month of May as there was the expectation that deGrom would be back in June. Players wanted to do what they could to help keep the team afloat until he got back. It worked the Rangers had one of their best months in team history. It does seem like the deGrom news was like air being let out of a balloon. Dunning has started to regress back to where he was in 2022, Perez has reverted back to pre-2022 form, Heaney has been inconsistent, and now Jon Gray was scratched from his start on Tuesday due to blisters. All of this has happened very suddenly and has really tested the organizational pitching depth.

This team will have real issues going forward if the back half of this rotation is unreliable. I think we know what we are going to get with Nathan Eovaldi and Jon Gray. The team needs steady production from Perez, Dunning, and Heaney if they are going to stay in the race to win the AL West. The rotation's ability to give the Rangers a chance to win every game is what allowed the team to race out to a 40-20 start. It is what has also kept them from building on that start. Dunning 5 walks on Monday, Perez seven runs allowed in 3 1/3 innings, and Heaney four runs allowed in his last start against Tampa. The Rangers' formula to win relies on getting a good performance from their starting pitcher that night. When the starters pitch well the team normally wins.

#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.

#5 Issue affecting the Texas Rangers: Questionable managerial decisions by Bruce Bochy

Bochy has won three World Series, participated in four, and will forget more about baseball than I will ever know. I am just a fan who watches the games, so I do not know the complex factors that influence his decision making. I will say there have been some decisions he has made over the past week that were confusing in the moment and not just in hind sight. No one is above criticism. Bochy deserves the manager of the year award, but he is not perfect either.

The first decision was the amount of players who got the game off last Wednesday against the Cardinals. It made sense as they had already won the series, but it also hampered the ability of the team to win and sweep that series. They chose to sit out Ezequiel Duran, Mitch Garver, Leody Taveras, and Adolis Garcia. Taveras and Garcia did pinch-hit late, but neither got a hit or on-base. The questionable aspect of this was that the Rangers had an off-day following this game. It just showed a level of arrogance that the Rangers' C lineup could still beat the Cardinals. They were certainly humbled as that lineup was shut out. The rest did not help the team as they kicked off the Tampa series by getting three hits in game one of the series.

The second questionable decision was on Monday in the 12th inning. I understand the thought process behind it and that there is right answer, but he should have given stronger consideration to walking Ohtani to lead off the 12th. Ohtani is the best player in baseball and right now Trout is not quite the player he once was. I understand that is putting an extra runner on base, but it does set up the double play and allows Ragans to avoid facing Ohtani. Bochy said after the game he was considering walking Trout if Ragans had got Ohtani. Instead Ohtani hit his second home run of the game and the Angels ended up winning by four.

The final questionable decision was on Tuesday night. Brock Burke was brought in to relieve Owen White in the seventh inning. He retired everyone he faced through the top of the ninth. The only exception to that was an intentional walk to Ohtani. He got Mickey Moniak on a groundout and had 22 pitches with one out in the ninth. The score was 4-3 and Bochy brought in Jose Leclerc. Burke had nine days of rest prior to his appearance on Tuesday night. He has a pitch count high of 39 and is regularly between 25-35 pitches in his appearances. He needed two more outs and was removed.

Leclerc was able to only get one out, while allowing three runs. John King had to be brought in to get the final out. He left with the score now 7-3 and a winnable game quickly became unwinnable with that one decision. Burke had pitched two innings, but it felt like he would have been able to finish the inning. Just a questionable decision all around. It felt like Bochy wanted to see how Leclerc would do in the ninth inning so as to know if he can be trusted in a late inning role again. He got his answer and unfortunately, it may have cost the Rangers the game.