Picking out the weirdest, best and worst from Texas Rangers’ season-opening loss
In a season with 162 games, having a day off after only one afternoon of baseball might seem a bit ludicrous. But that’s the schedule the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals were dealt for the 2021 MLB season.
In retrospect, everyone might have needed a day to fully wrap their heads around what happened Thursday in the season opener.
The Royals beat the Rangers 14-10, and it’s not difficult to comprehend why. Neither team pitched particularly well. The offenses were, conversely, very good.
But a deeper dive is required after the squads played 4 hours, 26 minutes, which rates as the longest nine-inning season opener in MLB history.
“Weird things happen on Opening Day,” Rangers manager Chris Woodward said.
Oh, they happened.
Both teams scored five runs in the first inning.
Neither starting pitcher made it past the second inning.
Both teams threw more than 200 pitches, with the Royals leading the way with 202. There were 17 walks and 24 strikeouts, so there’s at least 140 pitches right there.
There was a catcher’s interference, one of three Rangers errors. Each catcher had a passed ball. Three hitters were hit by pitches, including two on consecutive pitches.
The Rangers had two runners thrown out at home, and despite scoring 24 runs, each team stranded 13 runners.
Weird things, indeed.
But don’t let the oddities distract from what the Rangers did right and need to do better Saturday afternoon at Kauffman Stadium for the second game of the season.
The Good
Offense clicks: All the spring talk about improving at-bat quality, staying in the strike zone and hitting the ball to the middle of the field came to fruition for much of the game.
The Rangers didn’t get out of that approach in the first inning, when they loaded the bases with no outs. Instead of trying to make something happen, they took walks and hit ropes to center field, and they did it the next two innings, too, after the Royals stormed back to tie the game.
Joey Gallo reached base five times. That’s hard to do, and he did it with three walks and two singles. David Dahl reached four times on his 27th birthday, and he and Jose Trevino had three hits apiece.
The Rangers scored 10 runs without a homer. That’s a good thing.
“It is encouraging,” Woodward said. “Joey didn’t hit a grand slam or there wasn’t one swing. It was consistency of the at-bats.”
Nate Lowe busts out: The first baseman didn’t have a great spring statistically, but he impressed with his approach at the plate. He found himself in the middle of the Rangers’ early rallies, and didn’t disappoint.
Lowe collected a bases-loaded double in the first and RBI single in the second, both on balls to left field and both on swings early in the count. He spent much of the spring tracking balls and working deep counts, so the Rangers were pleasantly surprised by his quick swings.
He did strike out three times, so it wasn’t all good. But Lowe had a very productive day.
Two rookies pitchers deliver: One of the more surprising additions to the Opening Day roster was left-hander John King, who made his MLB debut last season. On Thursday, he was their best pitcher.
King delivered the only 1-2-3 inning by the Rangers, working a perfect sixth on a tidy 11 pitches. A sinkerballer, King spread the workload with grounders to shortstop, third base and second base.
Right-hander Josh Sborz also did well in his Rangers debut, ending the Royals’ fourth-inning rally and then pitching around a one-out walk in the fifth.
The Bad
Kyle Gibson flops: In arguably the biggest start of his career and with family and friends in the crowd, Gibson recorded one out.
His ERA is 135.00 after MLB’s shortest Opening Day start since 1982. He walked three batters, consecutively. The first two came with a five-run lead.
He said his mechanics let him down, which was an issue last season with runners on base, and he also didn’t have command of what he said was not his best stuff.
Adding to Gibson’s misery is that the outing stewed inside of him for nearly four hours before he met with the media on Zoom.
That’s a lot of things to have gone wrong in his first career Opening Day start.
“I don’t think that’s the first time I haven’t made it out of the first inning,” Gibson said. “I definitely didn’t want to sit in the locker room the whole time. I felt like I put the team in a bad situation, and I wanted to be out there to cheer those guys on.”
Too many walks: Free passes led to Gibson’s undoing and became a theme for the game. Rangers pitchers issued eight walks, and six of them scored.
Rookie right-hander Brett de Geus, making his MLB debut after never pitching above A ball, walked the first two hitters he faced and then he hit the next two.
As much as the Rangers preached grinding at-bats by the offense, they might have preached even more to the pitchers about limiting walks.
“If we continue to walk guys and pitching around the strike zone rather than in it, then it something we’ll have to thoroughly address,” Woodward said.
Leody Taveras struggles: The rookie center fielder, trying to convince the Rangers that he should stay in the big leagues long-term once injured outfielders Willie Calhoun and Khris Davis are healthy, went 0-for-5 in the opener and stranded 10 runners.
Taveras batted with the bases loaded in the eighth as the potential tying run and struck out on three pitches. That was the second time he struck out with the bases loaded and his fourth strikeout of the game.
He also committed a throwing error.
The good news for him is that Woodward did not pinch hit for him in the eighth even though Ronald Guzman might have seemed like a better option.
“If something is really bad and I’m seeing it, I’ll make an adjustment at that point,” Woodward said. “But I’m not going to pinch hit for a kid in Game 1 just because he has a couple tough at-bats.”
This story was originally published April 2, 2021 at 5:18 PM.
