Lucky? sure. But Texas Rangers took advantage of Los Angeles Angels’ sloppiness
The DoppelRanger appears to be hit.
More of the cardboard cutouts appeared Friday at Globe Life Field as the Texas Rangers opened a six-game homestand. They cost $50 and proceeds go to the Rangers Foundation.
More than half of the lower seating bowl is filled with them, and they can also be found in the outfield seats, too. The celebrity cutouts behind home plate are now wearing face masks.
I wonder if the Rangers needed to ask Adrian Beltre about wearing one, him being sensitive with anyone touching his head.
If they did, I wonder if they tried to talk him out of retirement.
Aw, who needs him?
Here’s some Rangers Reaction from a 4-3 victory over the Los Angeles Angels that snapped a three-game losing streak.
Make your luck
The Rangers scored three times in the fourth inning to erase a 3-1 deficit, and they did so without an RBI hit.
The rally started with a hit, a leadoff single by Todd Frazier, but that was the only one. Yet, it was a good offensive inning as the Rangers sent eight to the plate and forced Angels starter Griffin Canning out of the game.
“We didn’t get a ton of hits, but we put pressure on the pitcher,” manager Chris Woodward said. “They gave us a few freebies, but a lot of it had to do with the resilience of the at-bats.”
The inning was a by-product of not trying to do too much. That’s something many Rangers have said has bogged them down.
The Rangers drew three walks, including one with the bases loaded, capitalized on two errors, including one with the bases loaded, and had a bases-loaded hit by pitch.
It’s not exciting baseball, but it’s baseball. It’s doing what the game asked them do, as Ron Washington used to say.
They saw that Canning was struggling and waited him out. No batter chased outside of the strike zone, trusting the guy behind him to get the job done.
The big hit never came, in part because it wasn’t there for the taking. But
“It’s huge,” third baseman Isiah Kiner-Falefa said. “Anytime you get opportunity at this level, you have to capitalize. Just to have that go in our direction and to capitalize shows a lot about our team.”
Other encouraging signs
Try not to laugh or roll your eyes or spit out your coffee.
Things might not be as awful as they seem. That’s not just the strange high of a win talking.
Things are still bad, but there is some underlying good that might snowball into an actual winning streak.
▪ Start with Rafael Montero, who came off the injured list before the game and was asked to close things out in the ninth inning. He tossed a 1-2-3 inning, though it took a nice play at first base by Frazier and a timely right turn by a Mike Trout flyball down the right-field line that had home-run distance. Montero struck out Trout to end the game.
“That was really cool to see,” Woodward said. “He’s got a pretty good repertoire of pitches, with good command.”
▪ How about Willie Calhoun, who actually had a hit? Two of them. Granted, he’s still batting a meager .115, but during his current 2-for-14 slide he has struck out only once. He’s putting the ball in play, occasionally with some authority, which would indicate he’s going to finding some holes in the infield or some green grass in the outfield.
▪ Check out Kiner-Falefa, who went 8 for 22 on the road trip and singled in the second to push his hitting streak to five games. He isn’t elevating as many balls as he did in spring training and summer camp, but he has been making solid contact consistently.
He plays a pretty slick third base, too, and robbed Anthony Rendon of a hit in the sixth. Rendon, the big free-agent fish that got away from the Rangers, is hitting .121.
▪ Nick Solak doesn’t have as high an average as Kiner-Falefa, but he has been on base in 9 of 11 games this season. He walked twice and was hit by a pitch in his first three plate appearances Friday, which at the time boosted his on-base percentage to .357.
▪ Jordan Lyles was much better in his second Rangers start than in his debut, allowing three runs in 5 1/3 innings. He walked five in four innings a week ago at San Francisco, but trimmed the free passes to two vs. the Angels. He also worked with better tempo, something that everyone likes.
“The other day in San Francisco that’s uncharacteristic of myself, giving up those free walks,” Lyles said. “We did a little bit better job.”
Curse the luck
When a team is struggling to win, there is no margin for error. None.
Error, in this case, doesn’t just mean a fielding gaffe.
A center-cut fastball by a pitcher to, oh, Trout, is an error. Lyles did that in the first inning, and Trout launched a two-run homer 444 feet.
Outs on the bases really hurt. Twice the Rangers had second base stolen, only to see momentum carry Kiner-Falefa and Shin-Soo Choo off the bag just long enough to be tagged out. Video replay caught both instances of terrible luck.
However, the Rangers aren’t going to stop running.
“Those were just unfortunate,” Woodward said. “We beat both of those plays. We got good jumps. The base was slippery, the guys were sliding off a little bit, but we’re definitely not going to stop putting pressure on. I don’t believe in that. I think it’s silly sometimes when we’re reacting to what’s going on instead of saying, ‘Hey, let’s just keep doing what our game plan says. If they’re going to give us times to run, we’re going to run.’ “
And don’t forget about what players call “the little things” at the plate. Frazier calls it Baseball 101, things like moving a runner from second to third by putting a ball in play.
Elvis Andrus failed to do that in the second after a leadoff double by Calhoun. Andrus chased a pitch out of the zone for a strikeout when a little contact to the right side would have moved Calhoun to third with one out.
This one didn’t cost the Rangers much, as Calhoun scored two batters later, but it might have if right field Brian Goodwin hadn’t stumbled in right field on a shallow flyball that became a sacrifice fly.
But on Friday, the Rangers had more luck going their way than against them.
