Sam Haggerty’s return is helping change the narrative on the Rangers’ season-long struggle

ARLINGTON — The Rangers on Friday faced a lefty. Faced one Wednesday, too. In fact, they’ve faced lefties four times in the last five games.

Almost seems like it’s a trend or something.

It will be that way until the Rangers can prove it’s not a distinct advantage for an opponent to throw a lefty – any lefty – at them. Maybe, though, the Rangers are finally starting to do something to change the narrative a bit. On Friday, with switch-hitting Sam Haggerty back atop the line to start fires, the Rangers beat Atlanta 8-3 to win for the third time in a week against a lefty.

A key element on Friday was getting Haggerty, who is torching lefties, back atop the lineup after a 10-day IL stint. He had a pair of hits, stole a base, advanced on a wild pitch, scored a run and drove in another. Nice return.

Rangers

It also may not matter which hand a pitcher throws with right now. The Rangers are legitimately hot, creating just enough offense to make their sensational starting pitching stand out even better. In winning seven of their last nine games, the Rangers have allowed a total of 12 runs. On Friday, Nathan Eovaldi came back from a sore back to pitch five shutout innings and lower his ERA to 1.50.

It moved the Rangers to four games above .500 (54-50), the highest point they’ve seen since April. It puts them a half-game back of Boston for the final wild card spot. And, holy moly, at six games back of Houston in the AL West with six games still to play against the Astros, it’s not smart to overlook the division race, either.

Despite all this, the Rangers numbers against lefties are still under water. With the win, they are 9-17 against lefties, the third-worst record against lefties in the majors.

The Rangers began play Friday tied for last in batting average (.222) against lefty starters, last in OBP (.277), last in slugging (.335) and last in OPS (.613). On that last slash category, they were last by a whopping 24 points.

“I think the quality of at-bat can get a little bit better,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said of facing lefty starters. “Especially with two outs. But I also think you have to be a little bit fair, we’ve faced some pretty good lefties, too. We faced [Tarik] Skubal the other day. And we’ve had some success against some guys, like [the Los Angeles Angels’ Yusei] Kikuchi. We’ve had some good at-bats there.”

True enough, Skubal is the best pitcher in the big leagues, lefty or righty. And the Rangers have lost to him twice. But he’ll also be an obstacle any team will have to go through in the playoffs. As are the likes of Carlos Rodón, Max Fried, Framber Valdez and likely Garrett Crochet. Against that quintet, the Rangers are 0-6, hitting .184, have managed 8 runs (one unearned) in 37 ⅔ innings and don’t have a homer. They haven’t faced Fried yet, but may get both he and Rodon when the Yankees come to Arlington early next month and they have two series left with Houston, which means two more dates against Valdez.

The issue isn’t so much the Rangers’ left-handed hitters against lefties. Evan Carter has mostly sat. It’s that the right-handed hitters are so far off their career numbers it gives Bochy nowhere to turn.

Consider that Jake Burger, brought in to club lefties, is hitting just .214 against them, 40 points below his previous career line. And he’s one of the right-handers doing comparatively well. Jonah Heim, a switch-hitter, was hitting .185, Wyatt Langford .181, Adolis García .176 and Ezequiel Duran, whose role was to spell lefties, is hitting .051. In part, it’s why Josh Smith, a lefty, played first base instead of Duran against Joey Wentz on Friday.

“Some of our righties are kind of reverse split guys,” Bochy said. “But I still like to have a couple of lefties in there, usually. We went with only Corey [Seager] the other night, but I’ve talked about this. You don’t have any lefties, it just allows them to get in a groove with what they are doing, so I like to balance the lineup out a little more.”

Getting Haggerty back helped. He began the game with a two-strike single on a curve ball on the inside corner. Then he did what he does best: Instigate. With one out, he stole second and went to third when the ball went into center field. It allowed Marcus Semien to focus on simply hitting a fly ball, which he did to give the Rangers a 1-0 lead.

In the fifth, with the Rangers holding a 3-0 lead, his double off lefty reliever Aaron Bummer scored Michael Helman from first. It pushed his batting average against left-handed starters to .400 this year in 55 at-bats.

There’s still a ways to go, but it’s helping balance out a spot where the Rangers were very unbalanced.

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