What Corey Kluber said after his first spring start should thrill the Texas Rangers
Todd Frazier was preparing last week for a drastic downturn in sleep quality with the arrival of his family from New Jersey.
He was half-joking.
Maybe he was planning to wear out one of his three children Sunday as he brought the oldest, son Blake, to the Texas Rangers clubhouse for the first time.
The 5-year-old was up early and on the move, and he already has some swagger.
He walks like his dad, has a cool pair of shades like his dad, and swings a Marucci bat just like his dad.
The guess is that he can talk like his dad, too.
Here’s the Surprise Five from Rangers camp and an 8-6 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
1. The first pitch Corey Kluber threw in his first game since August was bounced to second base and should have been an out.
The next two hitters walked on pitches that the plate umpire might have missed.
It’s spring training for everybody.
Three innings later, Kluber had accomplished what he set out to do. He reached his pitch count and left the game healthy, unlike the last time he pitched.
Kluber is on the slow, strength-building march to the major-league season and knows what he must work on to be ready for the Rangers opening series March 26-29 at Seattle.
This isn’t his first rodeo, even though it’s his first with the Rangers. And he gave them some pretty good news afterward.
He said he feels as healthy at this point in spring training as he did during the best seasons of his career.
“The way I would judge a spring training start is how well I’m able to execute pitches, put the ball where I want to, avoid hard contact, and just trying to do that more consistent, more consistent every time out,” Kluber said.
He loaded the bases with no outs in the first, but allowed only one run, and the Dodgers didn’t get to him again until Enrique Hernandez hit a solo homer with two outs in the third.
“Really good,” manager Chris Woodward said. “The rest of the time I thought he was pretty spot on.”
Kluber threw 52 pitches, allowing two runs on two hits with two walks and four strikeouts.
“For the most part I executed pitches well,” he said. “It wasn’t like I had any glaring misses or anything like that.
“I don’t know if I necessarily put too much stock in spring training statistics. I think it’s more so trying to get to the point where you feel good out there, you go out there and execute pitches, work your way through at-bats and be in different situations.”
2. It’s still early in camp, but this stretch of games feel reasonably significant for the Rangers. If they are going to win with pitching, it seems important to gauge the progress of the projected five members of the rotation.
Kluber pitching in his first game is part of that. Kyle Gibson and Jordan Lyles will go for the first time in the next two games. Lance Lynn went Friday. Mike Minor is going Thursday.
As Kluber said, results don’t matter. It’s the feel for pitches and the ability to put them where they’re supposed to go. As always, it’s about getting through the spring healthy and with the ability to top 100 pitches from Day One.
The starters should be halfway there. They will add an inning and 15 or 20 pitches until they run out of spring starts.
But they have to get the first one completed. Maybe that’s why this feels like a stretch that is more important than usual.
3. Those looking for the long ball from the Rangers’ offense must be pleased with how the past two games have unfolded.
The Rangers have gone deep six times, with six different players connecting. The guy who’s expected to swat home runs did so against the Dodgers.
Joey Gallo hit the first of three homers with a solo shot to start the sixth inning. There was no doubt it would clear the fence, but it wasn’t the most impressive of the three.
The runner-up belonged to Isiah Kiner-Falefa, whose second spring homer was to just to the left of straightaway center field. The longest shot, though, was hit — hit a ton — by top prospect Sam Huff.
His first spring homer was to straightaway center, high off the 30-foot batter’s eye.
“That wind wasn’t helping either.” Woodward said. “Pretty impressive.”
Ronald Guzman, Eli White and Blake Swihart homered Saturday, with Swihart ending the game with a walk-off blast on the first pitch of the ninth inning.
It wasn’t the usual madhouse at home plate, though. In fact, no player had even reached the dirt around the plate, and finally someone threw a cup of water in Swihart’s direction.
“It’s spring training,” Swihart said. “You don’t want to go too crazy.”
4. Kiner-Falefa and Matt Duffy manned the left side of the infield behind Kluber, and those two are competing to be on the Opening Day roster as the utility infielder.
Kiner-Falefa is better at shortstop. Duffy has the edge in experience at third base.
Woodward, though, said something interesting: Some teams are sacrificing defense to carry more offensive-minded utility players and utility players who don’t necessarily specialize at one position.
Not all that long ago, teams wanted a utility infielder who could play shortstop. That was Woodward’s role as a player. But with infield shifts, third basemen and second basemen can play shortstop, and shortstops can play second base.
They might not be great, but they could cover a game or two or 10. Logan Forsythe had barely played shortstop in the majors before last season, but the Rangers stuck him there during the season when Elvis Andrus needed a day off and when Andrus was on the injured list in May.
The Rangers are going to have a backup catcher on their bench. They will have an infielder who can handle shortstop, an outfielder who can play center fielder and possibly a jack of all trades like Swihart.
He can catch, play first base and play the outfield. Eli White is another Swiss army knife who can play center field but who might be too young to stick his bat on an MLB bench.
Here’s the takeaway: The Rangers will choose from deep pool of candidates to fill out their bench, and defense won’t be the overriding factor.
5. Nomar Mazara had the day off Saturday and didn’t make the trip to Surprise Stadium with the Chicago White Sox in their first spring road game against the Rangers since the outfielder was traded during the winter meetings.
The Cleveland Indians head to Surprise on Monday, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Delino DeShields facing the Rangers for the first time since he was included in the Kluber trade just after the winter meetings.
DeShields has always liked to pack in his fair share of games each spring. The game is the same in Cleveland as it is in Texas, but the ultra-aware DeShields might want to play with his teammates to continue working on outfield communication.
He also has a bunch of friends on the Rangers’ roster. Some media members would like to say hello to him, too.
Come to think of it, that might actually convince him to ask to not make the trip.
