It’s difficult to start a game much worse than the Texas Rangers did Friday night
The Texas Rangers ordered the Globe Life Field roof opened Friday for only the second time this season.
The first instance was Aug. 10 against the Seattle Mariners. General manager Jon Daniels explained that the Rangers wanted to experiment with the open air and also begin the process of collecting data for future seasons.
On Friday, manager Chris Woodward said the reasoning was he thought it was a nice day.
The outcome of both games was the same — blowout losses.
Here’s some Rangers Reaction from a 10-6 loss to the Oakland A’s.
False start
That escalated quickly. And it was ugly, too, as in arguably the Rangers’ ugliest two innings this season.
The A’s opened the game walk, walk, walk, grand slam, walk.
The first four came against right-hander Luis Garcia, who was serving as an opener for starter Jordan Lyles. The walk after the grand slam was issued by righty Jimmy Herget, who had to relieve the opener.
Lyles entered in the second, and his second pitch was hit 464 feet by the A’s No. 9 hitter, Sean Murphy. Three of the next four hitters singled for another run, the next hitter delivered a sacrifice fly, and the hitter after that walked for a 7-1 lead.
Matt Olson had five RBIs after the A’s first two times up. He hit the grand slam and had an RBI single.
And somewhere in all of that was a passed ball against rookie catcher Sam Huff and a balk by Lyles. All that was missing were some fielding errors, though Herget nearly threw a pickoff throw past first baseman Ronald Guzman.
The Rangers saved those for the third and fourth innings.
Give Lyles some credit. He pulled himself together and ended up going seven innings on 115 pitches for the longest relief outing by a Rangers reliever since Dustin Nippert went seven in a 2008 game.
“Those last five innings were really good,” Woodward said. “We’ve just got to get those from the beginning.”
Of course, Lyles is a starter and doesn’t care for having an opener in front of him. However, it worked earlier this month at Houston, when Garcia tossed a scoreless first and Lyles followed with what he said was his best outing of the season.
And then he wasn’t as good without an opener last weekend at Seattle.
Opener or not, the Rangers need him to find something he can take into the off-season. The same goes for Kyle Gibson. Both are under contract for 2021.
“Just getting him to get some confidence heading into the off-season. Him and Kyle,” Woodward said. “We’re going to need those guys to provide some significant innings for us. They’ve had a lot of years in the big league. We need them to be good. We need them to be the guys we signed.”
Huff’s debut
Not everybody can have an MLB debut like Anderson Tejeda, who had two hits, three RBIs and his first career home run Aug. 6 at Oakland.
Most of the time they look like Huff’s did.
Huff was on the receiving end of all of those first-inning pitches out of the zone from Garcia and some wayward ones from Lyles. None of that is on Huff, of course, as he only catches pitches.
“I was just trying to slow everything down,” Huff said. “I did not want to speed up and make a wrong decision for him. I just wanted to make sure he knows I’m trying to keep as calm as possible and keep him through the flow of the game try and get him through.”
Woodward didn’t see any panic from Huff, who was talking about the game plan during the first-inning pitching change and what he needed to do for Herget. There were no deer-in-the-headlights moments for Huff behind the plate.
“It’s pretty impressive to have that kind of composure for that age,” Woodward said.
Huff showed some smarts at the plate after striking out on three straight breaking balls in his first career at-bat, one in which he said he couldn’t feel his bat.
“I’m used to the first at-bat in a place I’m getting fastballs,” said Huff, who had never played above High A in the minors. “Instead, I’m getting sliders, front-hip sliders and curveballs. After that, I got the idea that they understand that I’m a power hitter. I started staying in the zone. The second at-bat I felt way better.”
He flied to center field in the second one, laying off the breaking stuff out of the zone and just missing an extra-base hit. He drew a walk to keep the line moving in the Rangers’ three-run seventh inning.
Joakim Soria quickly disposed of Huff in the ninth, striking him out on a 70-mph curveball.
Huff will get another chance Saturday. The Rangers play a doubleheader, so the catching duties will be split between Huff and Jeff Mathis.
Anything after that is up in the air. Jose Trevino’s left wrist is better than expected, Woodward said, and Trevino will travel on the Rangers’ final road trip next week. The Rangers will need a roster spot soon for Willie Calhoun, and the Rangers likely don’t need three catchers as long as Trevino is OK.
Andrus again
Elvis Andrus was back at shortstop for the first time since Tuesday, and he connected for his third run in the past 10 days. He made two nice plays at shortstop, but also didn’t make two he should have.
After all of that, an impartial observer who has seen Andrus for years shot a text that read, “Elvis seems like he’s having zero fun.”
Above just about anything else, fun has defined Andrus through his career. Even in previous bad seasons, he has found a way to find some enjoyment playing the game.
He was an everyday player then, however. Now, he has essentially lost his job as the Rangers evaluate Tejeda and has been forced to watch these losses rather than get a chance to help prevent them.
That can’t be any fun.
To Andrus’ credit, though, he has been a mentor to Tejeda.
Michael Young was Andrus’ mentor in 2009 after a difficult off-season in which Andrus was given the shortstop job and Young was pushed to third base.
Andrus, no doubt, remembers that and knows he must do the same for today’s younger players. That’s a responsibility all veterans have.
It just might not be a lot of fun.
This story was originally published September 11, 2020 at 11:34 PM.
