Little goes right for Rangers in lopsided loss to Twins

Over the course of 162 games, a major league baseball team will play at least one game in which almost nothing goes right.

Walks, errors, base-running blunders, bad relief work, lousy at-bats. All rolled into one giant dud.

That describes how the Texas Rangers played Tuesday night in a 8-1 loss to the Minnesota Twins that didn’t feel even that close. It was the most non-competitive the 9-12 Rangers have been this season.

The walks, six of them by Andrew Cashner, put the Rangers in a tough spot even though none of them came around to score.

“The walks, again, were the story,” manager Jeff Banister said. “The sheer volume of walks that we’ve given up, we just can’t continue to give all those free bases up.”

Cashner somehow managed to allow only two runs in four-plus innings despite the six walks and throwing only 51 of his 95 pitches for strikes. Anthony Bass offered no relief in allowing six fifth-inning runs following Cashner’s early exit.

At least he didn’t walk anybody.

Two of the runs against him were unearned because of an Elvis Andrus error during a stretch in which the first seven Twins batters reached.

The Rangers’ offense continued to misfire, this time making three outs on the bases. Two came as Shin-Soo Choo and Carlos Gomez attempted to advance on pitches in the dirt, and the third came as Ryan Rua tried to stretch a single into a double down seven runs.

At least there were only 20,568 at Globe Life Park to watch it.

Despite his utter lack of command, the result of a mechanical flaw, Cashner allowed only solo homers to Kennys Vargas and Miguel Sano. Cashner walked three in the first inning but didn’t allow a run, and the Rangers were in the game when he was removed following Sano’s shot into the club level in left field.

“I didn’t feel like I was very aggressive early in the count,” Cashner said. “Definitely too many walks. Definitely have to cut down on that, but I was, for the most part, able to minimize the damage with guys on base.”

Bass, though, took them right out of it. The first three batters he faced doubled, the fourth singled, the fifth reached on the Andrus error and the sixth singled before Bass got Brian Dozier to ground out.

Naturally, a run scored.

“He was trying to get us off the field, and it didn’t happen,” Banister said. “It was just pitches over the plate that they didn’t miss.”

The lone offensive bright spot was provided by Joey Gallo, who ripped a home run to right field in the Rangers’ fifth. The blast, which came off the bat at 109 mph and went 424 feet, moved him into a tie for the league lead in homers with seven.

It also kept the Rangers from being shut out for the second time this season. The base running stunted potential rallies in the first, fourth and sixth, though Banister didn’t seem to mind the decisions badly because the players were trying to generate offense against a starter, Ervin Santana, who might be the American League Pitcher of the Month at 4-0 with a 0.77 ERA.

But by scoring only one run, the Rangers have scored two times or fewer in six of their past eight games.

“We’re not at a point we think we’re going to be,” Banister said. “We’re not a two-run-a-game team. I believe they can be a run-scoring offense.”

The Rangers weren’t Tuesday. They didn’t do much right in their worst game of the season.

This story was originally published April 25, 2017 at 10:51 PM with the headline "Little goes right for Rangers in lopsided loss to Twins."