Don’t expect 14 or 15 runs a game, but Rangers finally show they can hit away from home
A few silly debates were held Sunday morning as reporters tried to find something to write and or plan when they were going to write their off-day stories.
The latter came down to whether it’s a good idea to take the red-eye flight home from the West Coast or fly home the next day. (For the record, writers do not fly on the team charter).
It’s a tough one. Taking the red-eye essentially means staying up all night and losing a half day sleeping at home. Staying an extra night in a city means getting up early for a flight and, because of the difference in time zones and length of the flight, losing most of the next day at home.
Teams in all sports get on a plane and leave as soon as possible. They don’t have to worry about passing through security lines or getting stacked up on a runway behind eight other flights.
They might not arrive home until 3 a.m. after some flights, but they would rather be home (and save on 40 hotel rooms).
Looks like we have our winner: Red-eye.
The Texas Rangers will have a day off Monday to recover from their flight home Sunday. They might be pretty tired from all that offense the finish the series against Seattle Mariners.
Here’s some Rangers Reaction from a 14-1 victory.
1. Momentum, some baseball types like to say, is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher, and former Rangers eighth-round draft pick Erik Swanson (2014) wasn’t very good for the Mariners as the Rangers piled up runs for the second straight game.
Elvis Andrus and Hunter Pence hit two-run homers in the fourth inning only two batters apart, and the Rangers had two four-run innings. Swanson, part of the 2016 deal to get Carlos Beltran from the New York Yankees, was tagged with nine runs and received very little assistance from the Mariners’ woeful defense.
Rangers hitters more than did their part. Pence collected four RBIs, giving him seven the past two games, and Andrus collected his American League-leading 14th multi-hit game.
Nomar Mazara, who was 0-for-15 entering play Tuesday, finished the road trip on a six-game hitting streak (12 for 29).
Shin-Soo Choo hit a solo homer in the ninth to give him a three-hit game, and Logan Forsythe hit a two-run homer and went a combined 6 for 11 on Saturday and Sunday.
The Rangers collected 29 runs on 37 hits in the final two games and scored at least 13 runs in consecutive games for the first time since 2008.
“You don’t want to get too invested in one road series or these first two,” Pence said. “There’s a long way to go, and I don’t think anyone looks at it as road and home. It’s just keep getting ready for each game.”
The hope now is that an off-day doesn’t cool off those bats. Of course, the Rangers are going home to open a five-game road trip that starts Tuesday, and they certainly haven’t had any problems hitting a Globe Life Park this season.
The Rangers hit on their road goal the past two games by scoring early and often. Getting leads allows the hitters to stay with their approach rather than perhaps press to make something happen, and it also gives the starting pitcher a chance to attack hitters and get the opposing lineup out of its game plan.
“It’s something as a team we know we need to do more often,” Andrus said. “On the road it was missing. It’s a huge two wins here.”
2. Lance Lynn gave the Rangers shutdown inning in the first after they had pieced together three singles for a 1-0 lead. It took Lynn 28 pitches to do it, but it was a zero that kept the Mariners from any momentum.
Lynn was still pumping six innings later, and he allowed only one run in seven innings.
The 113-pitch performance came after he allowed a career-high-tying eight runs in 3 1/3 innings Tuesday at Oakland and kicked off a busy week for the Rangers’ bullpen. Mike Minor gave the bullpen rest Saturday, and Lynn provided some more Sunday.
He said that he and Minor wanted to stop the losing ways because they were on the mound for the first two losses to open the road trip and a five-game losing streak.
“That’s just the truth,” Lynn said. “He and I together have to do well, and if we starting doing what we’re supposed to do, maybe it starts trickling down and everybody does what they’re capable of and we get on a roll. That’s our plan.”
The Rangers improved to 4-2 when Lynn starts, and he lowered his ERA from 6.51 to 5.45. Of the 20 earned runs he has allowed this season, 15 came in two starts.
He’s been better than many are giving him credit for based on his not-so-shiny first-month stats. The No. 1 thing that matters to him is if his team won or lost, not necessarily how he did.
But he had to make a change after the first two pitch-heavy innings. He started landing his off-speed pitches for strikes, said manager Chris Woodward, and that allowed Lynn’s fastball to play up.
He hates throwing off-speed pitches, but he had to do something to turn his start around and did.
3. Joey Gallo is going through one of those swoons of his, where he gets enough out of whack to start missing pitches by the dozen.
He started Saturday in an 0-for-10 skid that stretched to 0 for 13 before he knocked his ninth homer of the season. In a strange twist, it barely cleared the wall and was nearly caught by Mitch Haniger.
Gallo was also the first batter to make an out in the ninth inning against Mariners utility infielder Dylan Moore, who was pressed into action as Seattle dealt with its own bullpen issues.
Gallo’s one-week reign as American League Player of the Week will end Monday, but another hot streak could be coming as the Rangers return to Globe Life Park.
He will be recharged mentally after a day off Sunday and the Rangers’ off day Monday.
Talk of his dry spell and some frustration sparked what I thought was a conspiracy theory about umpires and high-strikeout hitters, that the umps have a bias and feel they can ring up K-prone hitters on closes pitches because, well, they were going to strike out anyway.
Hitters who talk a lot of walks, like Choo, get the benefit of the doubt on close pitches.
Woodward made it sound as if that’s common knowledge.
“You see it with guys like Choo and other guys who have a reputation of not swinging at balls, they tend not to get strikes called,” Woodward said. “Umpires know. They have an idea of what they see of this hitter, his reputation in the past, his numbers in the past.
“Joey, I told him the first time I met him, ‘You’re going to have periods this year where you stick to it, where they expect it to be the old Joey and call strikes on you.’ Unfortunately, they are human. They are going based on reputation, so he has to re-establish his reputation. Sometimes there is a little bit of frustration, but he has to stay stubborn and he’ll gain a reputation in a good way, eventually, if he stays with it.
“Like Joey Votto, they don’t call it. They just think he has a great eye. They assume if he doesn’t swing, it must be a ball. Free-swinging guys, like Javier Baez, they know he swings out of the strike zone a little bit. It’s just natural. They know who is hitting and they know who is pitching.”
Gallo said in spring training that he is all for the implementation of robo umps. The real umps, with their steady dose of missed pitches, continue make the case that robo umps should be implemented.
This story was originally published April 28, 2019 at 7:20 PM.
