Three notable nuggets from the Texas Rangers’ 7-4 defeat to the New York Yankees
Rougned Odor is back at Globe Life Field, and he recorded a couple hits and made a nice defensive play at second base against his old team, the Texas Rangers.
He seemed like he always has before the game on a Zoom call, not talking too much about the past and ready to play hard to help his team win.
His new team, ravaged by injuries and a COVID-19 outbreak, is pretty good. The healthier it gets, the less Odor will play, but he’s playing now and seems like he always has.
Here’s some Rangers Reaction from a 7-4 loss to the New York Yankees.
Folty falls apart
The Mike Foltynewicz Roller Coaster was riding high the first three innings Tuesday. He was competing without his best stuff and had some momentum behind him when he went to the mound in the fourth inning with a 3-0 lead.
And that’s where the ride came to a sudden stop.
Foltynewicz didn’t finish the inning, and before the Yankees were done hitting they had scored five runs to take a lead they would never surrender. Nothing was cheap against Foltynewicz with line drive after line drive, including one by No. 8 hitter Mike Ford that left the bat at 109 mph.
Foltynewicz was having trouble putting hitters away, none more so than Gio Urshela’s at-bat in the fourth. Foltynewicz was ahead in the count 1-2, but Urshela fought for a double that brought in the Yankees’ first run.
“He had some big misses in that fourth inning that he didn’t have earlier in the game,” manager Chris Woodward said. “All those two-out hits, one after another after another, and he just couldn’t stop the bleeding.”
Foltynewicz at times has danced a fine line this season, with big innings lurking, but somehow has escaped many of them. Call it Martin Perez Syndrome.
This time, though, Foltynewicz couldn’t escape. He called it “embarrassing” that he couldn’t provide a shutdown inning after being given the lead.
“I put the team in a bad position to claw their way back,” he said. “I’m always trying to work on stuff, but I was trying to be too cute with those two-strike pitches.”
Replay magic
The Rangers built that 3-0 lead thanks to the replay booth.
The Yankees thought they had picked off catcher Jonah Heim at second base to end the inning, but Heim immediately told Woodward to call for a replay review. He did, and it was painfully obvious that umpire Bill Miller had missed the call.
So, Nick Solak’s at-bat continued, and he singled to left field to plate Heim. Nate Lowe and Joey Gallo followed with walks before Adolis Garcia singled in Solak and Lowe.
“It was cool that we ended up scoring three,” Woodward said. “We almost scored more than that. We were a hit away from potentially getting more. We had them on the ropes right there.”
The Rangers closed within 5-4 in the fifth as Solak went deep for the first time this month, but the Yankees’ bullpen held serve the rest of the way.
“Their bullpen is good, and we knew that,” Woodward said. “The meat of their bullpen is really tough.”
Gallo robbed
Odor made a second good defensive play in the game, in the seventh inning, when he happened to get his glove in front of a Gallo line drive.
Odor was standing in shallow right field, well behind the infield dirt, when he grabbed the shot .... with a 115.1 mph exit velocity and .830 expected batting average (xBA).
“If he hits a little dribbler there to the same spot it’s a base hit,” Woodward said. “He can’t make a play because he’s so far back.”
Those are the things that drive Gallo and many left-handed hitters, including Odor, crazy. Defensive shifts that prevent hits like that are one of the things that MLB is considering banning.
MLB is already experimenting by having four infielders on the dirt at Double A. If MLB is feeling really frisky later in the season, it might experiment with two infielders on each side of second base.
Gallo — and Odor, for that matter — would be all for that.
This story was originally published May 18, 2021 at 11:17 PM.
