Rangers in a rut: Stalled offense sinks Texas vs. Detroit as record dips back to .500

DETROIT — Bruce Bochy turned 69 on Tuesday. He remains remarkably sharp and up-to-date with some of the latest metrics and data points that can validate, invalidate, excite and infuriate any and all on-field occurances within the parameters of a ballpark.

Like, for example.

“BABIP got us today,” Bochy said after the Rangers’ 4-2 loss to the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park.

He’s right. BABIP — or batting average on balls in play, or, the best way to explain it, a team’s outright luck — did not side with the Rangers. Not when a 97.8-mph Corey Seager flyout lands a foot shy of a three-run home run in the fourth inning. Certainly not when the Tigers collected back-to-back singles of 63.3 mph and 67.4 mph to take an eighth-inning lead. Or when a routine Zach McKinstry single skipped underneath the glove of usually-surehanded Evan Carter in right field to score Detroit’s first run of the game in the third inning.

Texas, one could measure, was unlucky on Tuesday. That’s not the biggest issue, though, and a veteran manager can recognize that.

“We’ve got to get these bats going, there’s no getting around it,” Bochy said. “We’re just not driving the ball like we’re accustomed to.”

The Rangers scored two runs on seven singles on Monday. The first came when Josh Smith reached on a single in the fifth, took second on a wild pitch and scored on an Ezequiel Duran single. The second came four at-bats later when Marcus Semien scored Duran with a single of his own. Seager flew out in the next at-bat to end the inning.

That’ll do it for your offensive highlights. Somehow, remarkably, it’s a longer reel than Monday’s 1-0 win when Texas’ lone run came on a groundball that Semien beat out to avoid a double play. It looked a bit like Saturday, when the Rangers scored just two runs in a loss to the Houston Astros, or Thursday, when they were shut out by the Oakland Athletics.

“At the end of the day, they have good arms over there,” Semien said. “We need to shorten up and shrink the zone a little bit better.”

Texas struck out eight times on Tuesday and 10 times on Monday. It didn’t help Tuesday that some hitters might’ve gotten exposed by a wide strike zone; Carter was called for a strike in the first inning that appeared to be in the zone, then went down swinging on a low-and-away slider. Wyatt Langford and Ezequiel Duran both struck out looking in the second on debatable pitches on the fringe.

Which, to say, is unlucky. The Rangers’ bats have just stalled. They’re a league-average hitting team (with a .246 batting average) since April 8, and they haven’t driven the ball for any sort of power during that run. All six of their hits on Tuesday were singles. They only hit one extra base hit (a Jonah Heim double) on Monday. Since April 8 — which started the 3-7 stretch that the Rangers are currently in — their slugging percentage (.348) ranks 22nd in the league. They’ve hit just five home runs in that period, and two came during Sunday’s 9-5 loss to Houston.

Texas led the AL in slugging percentage and home runs in 2023 and finished second in total doubles. It was a cornerstone of their World Series run, and the reason why the Rangers reached the postseason in the first place; even if the pitching faltered, the bats could pick it up.

Well, the pitching kind of faltered, kind of didn’t falter on Monday. Starter Jon Gray let up just one earned run in six innings pitched before the Tigers scored two in the eighth on those two soft singles and a Jacob Latz wild pitch.

The bats just weren’t there for support.

“You mix it up, I’ll tweak the lineup to try and get things going,” Bochy said. “I’m trying to rest guys. You get them off their legs, keep them fresh. You knew this would be a tough streak here. I was concerned about it before it started, but you keep just working and staying behind them.”

The Rangers’ lineup has remained fluid, partly due to injuries and partly due to an aversion to more. Third baseman Josh Jung (wrist fracture) and first baseman Nathaniel Lowe (oblique strain) are sidelined. Bochy gave Seager and rookie Wyatt Langford the day off on Monday, and gave right fielder Adolis García and catcher Jonah Heim a break on Tuesday as the Rangers are in the midst of a 17-games-in-17-days stretch.

Still, at .500 with a 9-9 record, the Rangers lead the AL West. The hope is that it’ll look considerably more comfortable when the bats return.

“Sometimes you got in these ruts where you’re not scoring a lot of runs,” Bochy said. “But it’s too good of a team to get shut down.”

Twitter: @McFarland_Shawn

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