CHICAGO — Full disclosure: This story was supposed to start differently.
This story — one of many that have endeavored to unpack the Texas Rangers’ season-long offensive failures — was supposed to begin with an insightful discussion that designated hitter Joc Pederson had with The Dallas Morning News before Saturday’s game.
Pederson, in essence, explained that the Rangers needed to prioritize the small aspects of their offensive approach and establish better habits in an attempt to create large-scale changes. Hey, it‘s as good of a theory as any.
It became a bit null and void, though, after Pederson fractured his right hand midway through a nightmarish 10-5 loss against the Chicago White Sox at Rate Field in which the Rangers fumbled those very minutiae of competent baseball that he’d called for. It triggered another failed escape from the ongoing funk that they’re so helplessly trapped in.
The exit appears as far away as ever.
“It sucks,” left fielder Wyatt Langford said. “We’re at a pretty low spot right now I’d say.”
It may be their lowest. The six-game losing streak — the last of which was keyed by a hellacious sixth inning meltdown against a last-place team — has dropped them to three games below .500 and five games back of the Seattle Mariners in the American League West. They are only 2 1/2 games up on the last-place Athletics, who, mind you, are housed in a minor league stadium.
Things are bad.
Bad, you’ll find, can compound quickly.
Can a sense of panic do the same?
“We’re not even thinking about it,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “We’ve got to come out here and play the game. That’s never going to change in our game.”
He slammed his fist twice on the visiting manager’s desk as if to emphasize the point.
“You’re going to have games that suck and this one sucked,” he continued. “We’re men. You tighten things up, put your big boy pants on and play.”
Pardon the frustration. Saturday’s game was ripe for it and the feeling has been in a state of escalation over time. Things unraveled in a miscue-laden sixth inning that was unequivocally one of the ugliest single frames of Bochy’s three-season tenure. It included six runs, four hits, three walks, three pitchers, one official error, two unofficial errors and one disastrously blown lead.
Here’s how it unfolded:
- Langford and center fielder Sam Haggerty collided in left-center field to mutually drop a fly ball from No. 9 hitter Austin Slater. Slater, a pinch hitter and the inning’s first batter vs. left-hander Hoby Milner, reached third base on what was ruled a triple. “We ran into each other,” Langford said. “We were both calling it. Neither of us heard each other.”
- Third baseman Josh Jung bobbled a Chase Meidroth ground ball and couldn’t make his throw in time. Meidroth reached on an error. Six pitches later, second baseman Marcus Semien fielded a Mike Tauchman ground ball and tried to tag Meidroth on his run from first to second. Semien missed the tag — which allowed Meidroth to reach second safely and Slater to score — and couldn’t make his throw to first in time to get Tauchman out. It cut the Rangers’ lead to 4-3 and left two runners on base.
- The Rangers replaced Milner (who did not record an out) with right-hander Jacob Webb. Webb let both inherited runners score on an Andrew Benintendi double before he allowed three of his own on three hits and two walks.
- It took right-hander Luke Jackson — the closer — to finish the inning. Even he walked the first batter he saw to load the bases before a Tauchman groundout mercifully ended it.
The White Sox, who’ve scored the third-fewest runs per game this season, led 8-4 when it was all said and done. Langford acknowledged that “it really should’ve been a 1-2-3 inning.”
“We haven’t done that,” Bochy said. “We just couldn’t get an out there. We gave them too many outs in that inning and that’s one thing we haven’t done — beat ourselves — and we did that inning.”
The self-immolation wasn’t exclusive to that inning or the Rangers’ usually stout defense. The lineup scored five runs on seven hits but left eight runners on base and was aided early by Chicago’s own defensive miscues. The pitching staff issued eight walks and allowed 14 hits. Right-hander Jack Leiter, who took a no-hitter into the seventh inning vs. the Houston Astros in his previous start, walked five batters in five innings.
Bochy, before the game, warned and cautioned of a situation in which the team’s offensive struggles bleed over into the defense and pitching sides. He doesn’t believe that was the case in Saturday’s loss.
“These guys won’t lose their focus,” Bochy said. “It just doesn’t happen. It just makes everything look worse when you have an inning like that.”
There just isn’t much good to observe at the moment.
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