SEATTLE – The two new Rangers relievers walked into the visitors’ clubhouse Friday having to work through some potentially awkward introductions.
Danny Coulombe? Hit Josh Smith in the face with a pitch two years ago. Phil Maton? Broke Josh Jung’s wrist with a sinker last year.
Nice to meet ya.
Better approach at making friends and influencing teammates: Enter a tight game against the team you are trying to chase down in the wild card race and … shove. Works almost every time.
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Would have been a perfect introduction, too, had it not been for closer Robert Garcia allowing a two-run walkoff homer to J.P. Crawford in Seattle’s 4-3 win. Coulombe and Maton worked the seventh and eighth innings of what had been a one-run lead deftly.
Related:Rangers’ offense continues to be more a concept than reality in walk-off loss to Mariners
Coulombe had spent Thursday in Cleveland hanging out with his Minnesota Twins bullpen mates on an off day until one by one guys started getting texts about being traded. Coulombe doesn’t quite remember where he fell in the order, but by the end of the afternoon five of the eight guys had been traded.
“It was kind of wild,” Coulombe said. “It was like one at a time. One guy would get a phone call. ‘OK, gotta leave.’ Another. ‘Ok, gotta leave.’ It was something, I’ll probably remember for the rest of my life.”
But he made some new memories quickly Friday by entering in the seventh to face lefty Cole Young and to stick around long enough to get MVP candidate Cal Raleigh, who typically feasts on left-handed pitching, on three straight cutters in three different locations. He didn’t throw a pitch harder than 85 mph in the strikeout.
Nice to meet you, too.
The eighth went to Maton, who’d been in St. Louis and had a pretty good idea he’d be traded when Cardinals President John Mozeliak told him to take Thursday off and, if he was still around, he’d travel to meet the team Friday in San Diego. He went West alright, but to the Rangers.
Maton, as you may remember, hit Jung with a sinker last April that changed the whole season for the Rangers’ third baseman and maybe for the Rangers, too. Jung missed four months recovering from a fractured wrist and was never the same. Neither was Maton.
Shortly after Maton arrived in the clubhouse, Jung came up an introduced himself. Presumably stuck out the surgically repaired wrist and shook hands. Didn’t show him the scar, though.
“He’s only been here like 30 minutes,” Jung said.
But, Jung said the best way over any awkwardness: “To joke about it.” Though, he said, he didn’t anticipate any awkwardness..
Another way: To dance through the eighth the way Maton did.
“That was definitely one guy that kind of reshaped my year last year,” Maton said. “After that, I fell into an absolute funk. I was afraid to throw my sinker. I know, obviously, I was in a better spot than him being hurt, but I spiraled. So, it’s kind of nice to be over here, meet him and hopefully build a relationship.”
He’d just started to use a sinker with Tampa Bay last year when one got way away from him. Jung, who had started to swing, tried to check it, left his wrist exposed and took an 87 mph sinker right on the most delicate part of the wrist. A disappointing first half followed and he was sent to the New York Mets in July for cash where he finally started to rebuild his season.
After an offseason at Driveline, he signed late with St. Louis, showed more confidence in the sinker to make himself a reliever with a four-pitch mix. He’s parlayed it into the best start of his career. His 2.35 ERA at the time he was traded was his best performance through 40 games of his career, just ahead of 2023 when he was with Houston.
He faced the Rangers in the postseason in 2023. So did Coulombe, who was with Baltimore. They both watched, with some pain and some admiration, how the Rangers put together a dominant postseason bullpen on the way to the World Series title.
They both want another shot at the postseason.
“As a 35-year-old, you don’t know how many more shots you get,” said Coulombe, who went to Texas Tech and has made his year-round home in Richardson. ” This is why we play this game, to fulfill that dream of getting to and winning the World Series. I’m just really excited to be here.“
On Friday, they made nice introductions.
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