ARLINGTON — Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo got himself chucked from Tuesday’s night’s game after a heated discussion over balls and strikes. His second baseman effectively ended the game four pitches later with a no-doubt home run.
These ejections can have a tendency to fire the offended team up.
Maybe Rangers manager Bruce Bochy wanted to take a similar approach when he was as critical of his club’s offense as he’s been this season.
Maybe he’d just finally seen enough.
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“We’ve got to swing the bats,” a visibly frustrated Bochy said after a 3-2 loss vs. the Diamondbacks at Globe Life Field. “I mean, come on, that was one of our worst games. We were bad tonight.”
The Rangers, now within a game of a .500 record and three-and-a-half games back of the final Wild Card spot, lost a one-run lead in the seventh inning when left-handed pitcher Robert Garcia’s comedy of errors allowed the tying run to reach base and eventually score on a single. They sunk into a deficit when Arizona second baseman Ketel Marte drilled a sweeper from left-handed pitcher Danny Coulombe into the second deck in left field to give the Diamondbacks a one-run lead in the ninth inning. Lovullo was ejected by home plate umpire Nate Tomlinson after the previous at bat in which shortstop Geraldo Perdomo was called out on a cutter below the strike zone.
Neither instance, Bochy believed, were the story of Tuesday’s loss.
Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Jung talks with hitting coach Brett Boone alongside bench coach Luis Urueta (81) and manager Bruce Bochy (15) during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Globe Life Field on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025.
Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer
Bochy — whose team has scored two or fewer runs in 47 of their 121 games this season and lost an American League-high 19 games when they’ve allowed three or fewer — has remained an adamant defender of the Texas offense despite its lackluster and inconsistent performance for the bulk of this regular season.
His belief-driven attitude led to catch phrases like “we just couldn’t get that one big hit” or “they’re too good not to” that populated the two-thirds of a season in which the Rangers have been a bottom-five unit in almost all major statistical categories.
Tuesday’s loss, in which the Rangers totaled four hits, went 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position and scored both of their runs on outs, did not include the common refrains.
“The pitching did a good job and, yeah, our defense did get shaky that one inning,” Bochy said, “but you’ve got to be allowed to give up a couple of runs. We were just not good tonight.”
The Rangers loaded the bases with no outs in the bottom of the third inning vs. Diamondbacks right-handed starter Anthony DeSclafani. They scored one run on a sacrifice fly from second baseman Marcus Semien but couldn’t plate another after designated hitter Joc Pederson struck out, center fielder Wyatt Langford walked and first baseman Rowdy Tellez flew out.
They advanced a runner to second base just twice more in the game’s final six innings but never moved one to third.
“It wasn’t our night,” Semien said. “Good thing is we play tomorrow, take the series. I don’t think either team played good on offense. I think they just had one big swing at the end.”
In the bottom of the sixth inning, with Langford at second base with two outs, right fielder took a middle-middle sweeper Adolis García from right-hander Jake Woodford before he chased a changeup below the zone and grounded out softly.
In the seventh, after catcher Kyle Higashioka reached on a one-out double, pinch hitter Sam Haggerty struck out on three pitches from left-hander Jalen Beeks and shortstop Corey Seager grounded out on a fastball low and away.
Haggerty’s at bat was the first of nine consecutive plate appearances that the Rangers went without a base hit. A one-out walk from pinch hitter Jake Burger in the eighth marked their only base runner in the final two innings.
“I feel like we’re hitting the balls hard,” third baseman Josh Jung said. “They find gloves, they made some good plays on us. That’s baseball. It’s easy to point fingers but that’s not going to help us down the stretch here. We’ve just got to keep growing.”
The Rangers had 11 hard-hit balls and only three fell for base hits. The Diamondbacks had 12, five for hits and one to take a late lead. Marte’s home run — which exited the bat at 111 mph and flew 445 feet into left field — came on a Coulombe sweeper that had carried a .095 slugging percentage this season. He hadn’t allowed a run since the Rangers acquired him from the Minnesota Twins at the trade deadline and hadn’t allowed a home run all year.
“I got ahead of him and he just put a really good swing on it,” Coulombe said. “I re-looked at it. It was down and in — probably could’ve gotten a little more in — but he’s just a really good hitter.”
It was the third of three runs that the Rangers allowed. Right-hander Jack Leiter allowed the first when center fielder Blaze Alexander crushed his fastball into left field to tie the game in the top of the third inning. Garcia, who was demoted from his closer role after consecutive blown saves against the Seattle Mariners two weekends ago, allowed the second when he couldn’t field a Jose Herrera comebacker to lead off the seventh.
The ball bounced off of Garcia’s glove and toward the infield dirt. He accidentally kicked it further as he chased it and, when he finally gathered the ball on the edge of the grass and dirt, he tried to no-look reverse flip it to Tellez at first base.
The result resembled an errant long snap and it allowed Herrera to reach second base.
“I kind of booted it from what I remember,” Garcia said. “From there, it was trying to do too much. I was trying to do too much because of letting the ball get away.”
Herrera took third base on a sacrifice bunt that was misfielded by Jung and scored on an infield single from Marte in the next at bat.
“He just got a little discombobulated, it looked like, and then he tried to flip it,” Bochy said before he shifted gears. “It wasn’t that. We’ve got to swing the bats.”
They’ve needed to all season.
Tuesday was a similar story.
It only elicited a different message.
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