SEATTLE — In what was supposed to be a lighthearted moment before Sunday’s road trip finale, the questions for Bruce Bochy turned to property damage. As in: What’s the worst you’ve ever snapped after a loss? There was a water fountain in Pittsburgh, he recalled. And a TV in San Francisco. But not much else came to mind.
It was almost like his team heard him — and tried to see if it could create new memories for him.
The Rangers fumbled badly all throughout a weeklong West Coast swing that was capped by a 5-4 loss to Seattle Sunday. There were fielding botches and “brain cramps,” and base-running blunders. Nothing, however, stood out as sorely as Adolis García easing into second base in the ninth inning of a one-run game, apparently assuming he’d be safe, after Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford bobbled a grounder. Alas, he was not. And what had the promise of a moving ninth-inning rally flattened into nothingness of what was sure to be a sullen 1,500-mile flight back to North Texas.
The Rangers finished the road trip to Anaheim and Seattle 2-5. In four days in Seattle, they were shut out, walked off and finally had sand kicked in their eyes. That was self-inflicted. They lost two games in the wild card race. And they did nothing to dissuade anybody from thinking this is the weirdest, most unpredictable Rangers team in years.
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The weirdness Sunday came first from Jacob deGrom, who allowed two two-out walks followed by two run homers to dig the hole and then more directly from García. He worked a nice seven-pitch walk off closer Andrés Muñoz to start the ninth. When Joc Pederson grounded to the left side, Crawford went to his right to get the ball, but as he reached into the pocket to transfer for a throw to second, the ball came loose. He recovered to catch and throw to second, but had García run hard all the way and slid, he would have been safe. Instead, he seemed to assume there would be no play and eased into the bag. The Rangers tried a desperation replay challenge. It didn’t take long to confirm the out at second.
“There’s no excuse, absolutely no excuse in the game,” Bochy said in quite possibly the strongest personal rebuke of a player’s actions in his tenure with the Rangers. “This can’t happen. I don’t know what he was thinking. Once [Crawford] booted the ball, maybe he thought he had it, but it can’t happen. It’s a game changer. We could have had first and second with no outs. You just play the game. You don’t stop.”
In keeping with the unpredictable nature of this team, it was a weird end to an otherwise fantastic day for García, who was 3 for 3 with a double that began one Rangers rally and a homer that had gotten the team back within one. It was only the third time this year he’d been on base four times. And yet, the story of the day was still about how he didn’t reach a base on time.
“I thought I was going to get there,” García said through an interpreter twice when asked to explain his thinking on the play and more directly why he didn’t slide.
The rest of the inning fizzled just as quickly. Sam Haggerty replaced Pederson at first base to try to get the tying run back into scoring position. But he waited deep into Wyatt Langford’s at-bat before breaking for second. While he took a wide angle and got his foot to the base before second baseman Cole Young could get the tag on him, momentum took his foot off the base before he could grab it with his hand. Young kept the tag applied. Though the initial call went the Rangers’ way, Seattle challenged and got the out. One pitch later, Langford struck out on a slider below the zone to end the game.
After an 8-1 homestand that vaulted them into a virtual tie for a wild card spot with Seattle, the road trip served to only underscore how unpredictable this team remains with fewer than 50 games now remaining. They lead the majors in defensive runs saved, but blew a game in Anaheim full of fielding miscues. They are second in the majors in base-running metrics, according to FanGraphs, and ran themselves right out of what might have been a road-trip saving rally.
Instead, it also served to underscore that, for all the unpredictability, one factor remains steadfast: The Rangers find ways to lose on the road. They are now 24-35 (.407) on the road. It is the sixth-worst road winning percentage in the majors. Only teams hopelessly out of the playoff race are worse.
They took a trip to the West Coast, were given opportunity after opportunity and came back only with burned opportunity remnants.
“You are always going to look back at a game you think you should have won,” Bochy said. “There’s no dwelling on it. It’s fair to say things could have been different. It was a tough road trip. It’s a shame that he had a brain cramp there.”
And with that, Bochy was done. He stared at a TV screen in his office that showed only the menu being served for the postgame meal.
We can’t be sure if he was contemplating what to eat or what to destroy.
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