Rangers Reaction: Another reminder of the great Grand Theft Carlos

When Carlos Gomez was let go by the Astros last August and the Rangers signed him a few days later, the move was met mostly with eye rolls and blank stares.

A major league team was going to snap up the former Gold Glove-winning All-Star center fielder but it was the Rangers who nabbed him, and for that, Jon Daniels, manager Jeff Banister and his coaches deserve all the kudos.

In 77 games over parts of two seasons with the Rangers, Gomez has 17 homers, 18 doubles, 10 steals, 46 runs scored and 51 RBIs.

You’d like to call it a steal but the Rangers didn’t have to give the Astros anything. It wasn’t grand theft, it was a grand gift from Houston. Thanks again, Astros!

Here’s the Rangers Reaction from a winning getaway day:

1. Cockadoodledoo Carlos — Did you hear about Carlo Gomez’s wacky walk-up malfunction on Thursday? Check it out here, because it’s hard to explain in just a few sentences. Gomez had a huge day, collecting three hits, including two homers and tying a career-high with five RBIs. It’s the fifth time Gomez has had a multi-homer game and second with the Rangers. He also did it Sept. 10, 2016 in Anaheim. Gomez has five homers in six games since returning from the disabled list on Friday. He even predicted before the game that he would homer.

On his second homer in the seventh, Adrian Beltre was on base and wasn’t exactly hustling around the bases. It didn’t bother Gomez.

“Not really. I had more time to enjoy it,” he said. “More importantly, we tied that series, and now we go to New York and keep it up.”

2. Perez and the big inning — Maybe too much as been made of the big inning issues for Martin Perez. The lefty has earned the win for the second consecutive start despite allowing a big inning in both. Sure, the Rangers have staked him with big early leads in both outings. On Thursday, Perez had two outs in the fifth with a 7-0 lead before a hit batter and an error helped the Blue Jays push across four runs. One of them was unearned.

“I believe he lost focus. He hit that guy and he was mad,” Catcher Robinson Chirinos said. “We were trying to go away to [Luke] Maile and he missed up for a double. After that it was hard to slow the game down and make his pitch.”

But to his credit, Perez regrouped after allowing a lead-off double in the sixth to retire the next three batters, including strikeouts of Dwight Smith and Maile to end the inning. He gave way to the bullpen for the final three innings and earned the win to improve to 4-6.

Perez’s big inning breakdown

A look at the big innings Martin Perez has allowed in his six of his 15 starts in 2017, including Thursday’s win:

3. The Power of 10 — The Rangers have 103 homers through 72 games, seventh most in the majors. A year ago, they had 88 homers in the first 72 games. It looks like a good bet that 10 players will end up with at least 10 homers in 2017. Joey Gallo, Mike Napoli, Rougned Odor, Shin-Soo Choo and Nomar Mazara are already there (see chart below!). Robinson Chirinos and Carlos Gomez need one more each and Elvis Andrus has seven, one shy of his career-high from ’16. Besides Andrus, the outliers are Jonathan Lucroy (4 homers) and Adrian Beltre, who has two after missing the first two months. Ryan Rua has three but he’s currently in Round Rock.

Ranger power

A look at the Rangers’ homer leaders through Thursday:

4. Chirinos keeps chugging — Robinson Chirinos had his first three extra-base hit game Thursday, which included two doubles and a homer. Not bad for the No. 9 hitter.

“It’s big for us. He’s played big for us all year long,” Banister said. “To be able to stretch [the lineup] out and have that type of production from the bottom, we saw how dynamic it was last year when we had Elvis down there doing what he was doing. It’s going to be key for us, not just for Chirinos but the entire lineup stretched out.”

5. 13 and going on break — The Rangers begin a 10-game road trip Friday in the Bronx. They play three against the Yankees, four against the Indians and three against the White Sox before coming home for three against the Red Sox in the last series before the All-Star break. It’s

“We need to keep going pitch by pitch, inning by inning,” Chirinos said. “When we do that as a team we do a really good job. We get into trouble when we try to do too much.”

This story was originally published June 22, 2017 at 10:42 PM with the headline "Rangers Reaction: Another reminder of the great Grand Theft Carlos."