Despite opening day loss, there’s still a positive to take from these 2026 Texas Rangers

PHILADELPHIA — Everybody turns back the clock on opening day. The Phillies, who will host the All-Star game in this Semiquincentennial year, leaned into the city’s revolutionary history. The Phanatic showed up Thursday in a Colonial Army coat and dragged along his own band of merry Minute Men volunteers. A bunch of Phillies from the 1976 Bicentennial team helped throw out the ceremonial first pitches. Memories are fun. Mostly.

For so much of the afternoon, it appeared the Rangers chose to just repeat 2025. Nobody remembers that time warmly. Seems like it was just last year.

If, by chance, you forgot, this is what it generally looked like: Few runs, fewer walks, lots of frustration.

Texas Rangers stating pitcher Nathan Eovaldi, right, reacts to giving up a three-run home...

Rangers

The only difference Thursday: The Rangers fought through the frustration, stuck to their process and made a game of it after all. Yes, Philadelphia marched off with a 5-3 season-opening win. This, however, omits some important detail: The Rangers were down 5-0 entering the ninth but, unlike last year, kept plugging away. They eventually forced Phillies closer Jhoan Duran into the game (inducing a brief Duran-Duran show). And they sent the tying run to the plate in the inning before Evan Carter grounded out to first.

They lost, but they stayed true to a process of swinging at pitches in their hot zones. They didn’t get many Thursday, but nor did they grotesquely expand their zones in pursuit of contact. Rather than making things easier on an opponent as the game progressed, they made it harder. Consider that a first step in the remake of this offense.

“I think we should take a lot from that ninth inning,” said Jake Burger, whose two-run homer in the ninth helped the Rangers avoid the shutout. “Sometimes last year, we’d be in a hole, and it was like, ‘Well, here we go again,’” Versus this year, it was like, ‘Hey, we still got a fighting chance. Let’s go out there and lay it all down. That’s definitely the vibe, for sure.”

You need not look any further than simply comparing the past two openers, in which the Rangers faced elite lefties both times. Last year, it was Boston’s Garrett Crochet, who would go on to finish second in the AL Cy Young Award voting. Thursday, it was Cristopher Sanchez, who finished second last year in the NL voting. Both lefties frustrated the Rangers early.

The difference was what came afterward. A year ago, the Rangers walked twice in the first two innings against Crochet, then seemed to stop grinding out at-bats. They saw 91 pitches — just 13 per inning — over the last seven innings. After Crochet left, the Rangers flailed against the Boston bullpen, seeing just 33 pitches. They seemed anxious to swing.

On Thursday, as the hitters say, Sanchez shoved. He limited them to three hits, all of them with two outs in six innings. He didn’t walk anybody; struck out 10. In the same period, Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber and Alex Bohm both jumped on mistakes from Nathan Eovaldi — a rushed curveball and a lazy-acting cutter — to hit a two- and three-run homer giving the Phillies a seemingly insurmountable lead.

But when Sanchez exited, the Rangers forced three Philadelphia relievers to throw 61 pitches over the final three innings. In the seventh, Burger, who had three of the Rangers’ eight hits, singled. In the eighth, Brandon Nimmo took the Rangers’ first walk. And in the ninth, Corey Seager beat out an infield single ahead of Burger launching an up-in-the-zone fastball from Kyle Backhus 438-feet to center. And the Rangers kept pushing. They seemed enthusiastic to compete.

“As soon as the relievers came in, we fought back, and all you can ask for is having the closer come into a game and giving yourself a chance,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “The fact we got him in the game says a lot about that group. If we fight like that over 162, we’re going to be OK. I really enjoyed seeing that part of it. Of course, you want to win, but rolling over is not acceptable. We didn’t do that. So I’m proud of the guys for attacking it like they did.”

If there is anything to take away from the first game under Schumaker, it is just that: They kept attacking.

The Rangers are going to struggle to score runs against elite pitching. Not that this is a revelation. It is, in fact, the norm for all teams.

A year ago, the Rangers played 20 games against pitchers who would eventually finish in the top 10 in their respective league’s Cy Young balloting. That included the season-opener against Crochet. They went on to finish 4-16 against those pitchers last year. The group posted a 1.57 ERA against the Rangers in those games. They struck out 142 Rangers in 120 innings, an average of 10.6 per nine innings. They had a 5-to-1 strikeout-to-walk rate against the Rangers. It wasn’t good.

Sanchez, himself, held the Rangers to a run in six innings in August, walking one and striking out six. By comparison, he may have been even sharper Thursday. He didn’t walk anybody. He struck out the top three hitters in the order in the sixth to finish off his afternoon with 10.

It could have gotten worse for the Rangers. Last year, it regularly did. On Thursday, instead of leaving the game with a whimper, they instead left with a glimmer.

“We stayed in the fight,” Schumaker said. “If you lose, hopefully the other side feels you a little bit, right? And I think they felt us.”

Twitter/X: @Evan_P_Grant

Jake Burger’s strong spring carried into opening day. Rangers are confident there’s more