After last night’s disappointing 9-6 loss in 12 innings at the hands of Shohei Ohtani and the Los Angeles Angels, the Rangers were back in action on Tuesday at the Globe, but not without feeling the effects of last night’s nearly four-hour marathon.
After throwing Grant Anderson, Josh Sborz, Will Smith, Cole Ragans, and Yerry Rodriguez out of the pen last night, the Rangers needed some arms to eat innings today. Texas looked to the minors, where they would expectedly call up Cody Bradford to make his third big league start.
What came very unexpectedly was the Rangers calling up their number one pitching prospect Owen White to make his big league debut out of the pen. White is a starter who is 2-3 with a 3.54 ERA with AA Frisco this year, yet due to the lack of fresh arms in the bullpen was needed in relief on Tuesday.
White came in during the 4th inning with one out and struck out Chad Wallach, who was the first batter he ever faced in the big leagues. The 5th, however, caused White a bit of trouble; he would give up two singles and an error from Corey Seager, which led to his first big league run scored against him. Then the very next batter after the error was Hunter Renfroe, who shot a home run to right.
Overall, it wasn’t a bad night for Owen White, who went two innings and gave up three earned runs, but he was not helped out by his defense, and things unraveled after the Corey Seager error.
When speaking after the game, Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said:
“The kid Owen, he should have come out a little better than that, had some ground balls that got through and of course the home run, the big blow, [but] overall pretty good.”
After throwing 99 pitches in a start with AAA Round Rock on Friday, Cody Bradford was shot into action just three days later, making his third big league start for the Rangers. The young lefty was brilliant tonight, going 4.1 innings and allowing just one run while striking out three.
When speaking on Bradford after the game, Bruce Bochy said:
“What a job he [Bradford] did, ya know, had to limit his pitches on early rest.”
The Angels would get to Bradford in the 3rd inning after catcher Chad Wallach doubled to lead off the inning and would eventually score on a sac fly, but Bradford did a really nice job of damage control in multiple innings and just allowed that one run.
However, much to the delight of Rangers fans, Texas would waste no time getting that run back. After Corey Seager smoked a 106.7 MPH double off the highest part of the Rangers bullpen wall, Nathaniel Lowe, who was the very next batter, sent an outside slider the opposite way into the left field seats to give the Rangers a 2-1 lead which they would hold after three innings of play.
Unfortunately for the Rangers, the next bit of scoring that came after Hunter Renfroe’s home run was a two-run shot in the 9th from Zach Neto of Jose Leclerc to make it a 6-3 game.
The Rangers fell 7-3 in another frustrating effort. Texas has now lost its last three contests and five out of its previous six.
The offense as a whole just couldn’t get big hits when they needed to and once again left a lot of guys in scoring position.
When asked if there was anything he could pinpoint as to why the Rangers were not getting big hits late, Bochy said:
“We’re spoiled with all the timely hits we got there for a while [and] it’s hard to sustain that.”
You knew that this team would slump a bit eventually, and now it feels like we may be in the midst of it, both offensively and as a whole.
The Rangers will be back in action tomorrow night at 7:05 in game three of their series with the Halos.
Andrew Heaney will get the ball against one of his former clubs as he looks to get Texas out of this rut.
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