Texas Rangers hadn’t had these two things happen in 2020 until topping Houston Astros
The Kumar Rocker Watch is over.
The team that finishes the 2020 MLB season with the worst record will receive the No. 1 pick in the 2021 draft, and the presumptive top pick will be the Vanderbilt right-hander.
The Texas Rangers had a chance at it entering the weekend. They had the No. 1 overall pick in 1973 and took David Clyde. They had the second overall in 1974, when they selected right-hander Tommy Boggs.
The Rangers needed the Pittsburgh Pirates to win twice at Cleveland, and the Rangers needed to lose all three games.
The Pirates are 18-40 after 58 games after snatching defeat from the jaws of victory Friday. The Rangers are 20-38 after 58 games after an unexpected win.
It’s still possible for the teams to tie for the worst record, but Pittsburgh would hold the tiebreaker by having the worse record last season.
Oh, well. Selecting second overall isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Here’s some Rangers Reaction from a 5-4 victory over the Houston Astros on Friday.
Sam and Ronald
The Rangers have had plenty of candidates for a multi-homer game this season, starting with Joey Gallo but also including Todd Frazier, Rougned Odor, Willie Calhoun and Danny Santana.
No, no, no, no and no.
The Rangers hadn’t had one player with a multi-homer game in their first 57 games, but that changed Friday night.
Anyone holding a ticket for Sam Huff being the first Rangers player with a multi-homer game, please see the cashier.
Huff swatted solo home runs in his first two at-bats to account for all the Rangers’ offense until Ronald Guzman gave them new life with a two-out solo homer in the ninth to tie the game.
Gallo won it in the 10th with a fielder’s choice after Nick Solak had tied it with a sacrifice fly. Gallo’s grounder up the middle was slow and to the right of second baseman Jose Altuve, whose throw home was too late to get Isiah-Kiner Falefa.
It was the Rangers’ first walk-off victory of the season.
“To see our younger guys compete and be out there in that situation is great,” manager Chris Woodward said. “I’m just really proud of our team. We haven’t won many games this year, and I know it’s been hard to keep fighting. ... But they haven’t quit.”
Huff took Jose Urquidy out to left field in the second and to right field the next time up. And for good measure, Huff added a single in the sixth before bouncing out to start the ninth.
“It means a lot if I can help contribute and win the game,” Huff said. “I want to keep proving and keep going and do my thing. I’m just trying to be consistent, have a good thought and have fun.”
His big night extended his hot streak. Huff has a five-game hitting streak, has multiple hits in two straight and has back-to-back games with multiple extra-base hits.
The power has been there, as advertised, but there’s been some quality hitting in there, too.
“The most impressive thing for me is just the mental stability of the kid,” Woodward said. “In the batter’s box, what looked like he was overmatched at first, he made adjustments very, very quickly. He really puts the time in, and he talks through what he’s going to do up there.”
Guzman continues to try to impress upon the Rangers that he can be their first baseman in future seasons, and the home run won’t hurt. He has four of them since being recalled from the alternate camp last month and is batting .250 while still playing very good defense.
With the Rangers rebuilding next season, they don’t need to go spend money on a veteran first baseman. Guzman would come at the league minimum, which is key for a team looking to shave payroll, and he’s still young enough to see if something might click at the plate.
“He hit the ball really well when he first came back, and then he got slowed down a little bit,” Woodward said. “Lately he’s been getting pretty good swings off on pretty good pitches.”
The Rangers might as well see if it sticks into next season.
Kyle and Jonathan
Huff caught right-hander Kyle Cody, who for the second straight start allowed one run in five innings. He pitched out of trouble a few times, and continued to show a knack for making a pitch when he needed one.
Cody continued to make his pitch for the 2021 rotation, though it will be tricky. While he’s the most deserving of the candidates so far, he also will have his innings limited in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery.
He was limited to five innings in his final two starts of the season. He wanted to pitch another inning, and thinks he could withstand a heavy load next season, but he also knows his place.
“I don’t want to complain in my first year. I just want to do what I was told,” he said. “I’m a pretty confident guy. I feel like my body can withstand a lot of innings, but I feel like I have to talk to Woody and Julio about that in the offseason and plan it out before I can say anything.”
Huff’s second homer put Cody in position for a second straight win, but John King quickly surrendered a run in the sixth. Jonathan Hernandez was a tad wild and unlucky in the eighth, when the Astros plated the go-ahead run on a softly hit ground single by Yuli Gurriel down the first-base line.
Guzman’s homer forced extra innings, and the Astros scored one off Brett Martin. The first two Rangers, though, walked to load the bases with no outs for Solak and Gallo.
They came through.
Guzman’s homer also bailed out the normally reliable Hernandez, who has been one of the few bright spots for the Rangers this season. Woodward said Hernandez might be the No. 1 bright spot, considering the journey Hernandez has taken the past two seasons.
Hernandez was a hot-shot starter who ran into trouble at Double A Frisco in 2018 and was moved to the bullpen in 2019. He’s had so much success this season that he is content remaining a reliever.
“They asked me about it, and I was like, right now I just feel comfortable going out of the ‘pen and I like the competition,” Hernandez said. “I like how hard I had to be with myself to go out there and compete. So, I just like that.
“They asked me if I want to start. Right now I will say maybe no, because I know how long the process to move to the bullpen was and to go out and start again, right now, I think I will just stick with my bullpen guys.”
He didn’t rule out starting in a few years, but the Rangers should. They probably don’t need to be reminded of this, but they have a fairly sketchy history with converting relievers to starters.
Marty and Waylon
Before Chuck Morgan became the full-time voice at three Rangers ballparks and neared 3,000 consecutive MLB games, a plateau he will reach Saturday, he spent time on the long-running show Hee Haw and was also a disc jockey in Nashville.
Add working at the Grand Ole Opry, and Morgan came across plenty of country music’s biggest stars before he started coming across MLB players.
Roy Clark and the great Buck Owens were the stars of Hee Haw, and Minnie Pearl was the matriarch of the Grand Ole Opry. As a DJ, Morgan hosted a who’s who of country stars.
However, the two coolest characters Morgan said he met were Waylon Jennings and Marty Robbins.
(In my personal rankings of classic country musicians, Robbins is No. 1, Jennings is No. 2, and Merle Haggard is No. 3. Needless to say, what follows was the highlight of my work day.)
It turns out that Robbins, the crooner who sang the classic hit El Paso, was partly responsible for Morgan coming to the Rangers.
Unfortunately, it took Robbins dying in December 1982 for Morgan to accept Larry Schmittou’s offer to follow him from Nashville to the Rangers. Schmittou had been hired as the vice president of marketing after many successful seasons running the Nashville Sounds, and Morgan had worked Sounds games.
Morgan called Robbins his closest friend in Nashville.
“Marty would come by and see me two or three times a week on my radio show because he couldn’t sleep at night,” Morgan said. “We became very close friends. When he passed away, it’s almost like I lost my fastball or I couldn’t hit the curveball. It just didn’t feel right anymore.
“When Larry Schmittou called me in December I first turned him down and then I got to thinking about it. It didn’t feel right Marty wasn’t coming by anymore. I called Larry back in January and said, ‘Hey, I’m coming to Texas.’”
Before he left, Morgan received one final visit at the radio station from Jennings, who was billed as a tough interview before Morgan got his chance to sit down with the outlaw from Littlefield.
“For the longest time, I had wanted to meet and interview Waylon Jennings, and our paths hadn’t crossed until the last three or four years I was there,” Morgan said. “I had been told that Waylon didn’t talk much, which you always worry about that. But once Waylon and I got together, it worked out pretty good, and he kept on coming back. The last week I worked in Nashville, he came by to tell me goodbye and that was pretty cool.”
That was pretty cool.
