DETROIT — How can a team that fielded a franchise-best defense one season ago play error-free baseball, continue a stretch of remarkable highlight reel-caliber plays and still have a costly mess left over to show for it?
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The Rangers might not be able to explain it, but in Sunday’s 7-1 loss to the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park, they proved those sequences of events to be more than just an abstract riddle. The defeat — which clinched a series loss and a drop to two games under .500 — was marred by a bevy of defensive miscues that either directly or indirectly contributed to more than half of Detroit’s runs. It mirrored a trend in which the once rock-steady Rangers defense has regressed to barely average in under a year.
“We weren’t real fundamentally sound like we’re typically used to,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said. “We had some really good plays. The outfield had some really good plays, there were some plays in the infield that were really good as well, but there were some plays that we’re used to making that we didn’t.”
It started in the sixth inning, while the Rangers trailed by a manageable two runs, when center fielder Evan Carter laid out to catch a shallow liner from Tigers catcher Jake Rogers. Carter whiffed, the ball rolled a ways, Rogers cruised into third base with a stand-up triple and scored one at-bat later when shortstop Kevin McGonigle singled off of right-hander Jack Leiter. Carter, the American League’s statistically best center fielder this season who made a fantastic catch on a long run in Saturday’s loss, has earned himself the benefit of the doubt. In hindsight, though, the slow-footed Rogers would have been a significantly slighter threat at first base had Carter laid up and fielded a single.
One run created by a questionable defensive decision is a palatable offense. Four runs created by errant plays aren’t. In the seventh inning, with Tigers left fielder Kerry Carpenter on first base with one out after a single, right fielder Wenceel Pérez hit a decently struck ground ball to first baseman Jake Burger. He bobbled the could-have-been inning-ending double play ball and only had time to flip it to Leiter at first base for the second out.
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The Tigers scored Carpenter one at-bat later when second baseman Hao-Yu Lee hit a ground ball through the infield that his defensive counterpart Josh Smith couldn’t swat down, and after Rogers singled after him, another run scored when McGonigle singled into right field. Right fielder Andrew McCutchen, who turned back the clock with an impressive diving catch two innings prior, threw the ball back in to Burger as Lee jogged into third base. Lee started to turn toward home plate, and when Burger began to run across the infield to hold him at the bag in lieu of a throw, McGonigle took second base, and both runners were safe. Lee and McGonigle scored in the next at-bat when center fielder Matt Vierling doubled to give the Tigers a 7-1 lead.
“I’d like that play tonight, for the double play, but we ended up getting one out,” Burger said. “I think as a collective, we’re confident in our defense, it’s just an ebbs and flows type thing.”
The flows have taken the Rangers from shutdown to shaky in the field. Their 16 errors, 6 defensive runs saved and minus-1 outs above average each ranked average or below before Sunday’s game. Schumaker pushed back on the notion that there’s been a deficiency of awareness or attention in the field.
“It’s not a lack of focus,” Schumaker said. “It’s more, when your offense doesn’t go, this thing gets magnified.”
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The offense didn’t go, again, despite the fact that the Tigers rolled out a gaggle of relief pitchers in a bullpen game. The Rangers didn’t score until the seventh inning when the combination of a passed ball and a softly hit grounder from catcher Kyle Higashioka plated a run. They left eight runners on base, finished 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position and stranded their hottest hitter multiple times. Third baseman Josh Jung reached twice — once on a single and again on an error — but the hitter in front of him (shortstop Corey Seager) and the hitter behind him (Burger) combined for four strikeouts.
Their .686 OPS is now only three percentage points better than the .683 OPS that they posted last season when their spectacular rotation was often left out to dry. Leiter, back at the ballpark where he debuted just over two years ago, was nearly spectacular in his own right Sunday evening. He struck out five consecutive batters between the first and second frames, threw 19 of his first 23 pitches for strikes and was ahead in the count against Detroit’s first nine batters. It wasn’t until the fifth inning, when Tigers left fielder Riley Greene walked on four pitches, that Leiter allowed a base runner. He hung a slider to first baseman Spencer Torkelson in the next at-bat and was punished with a two-run home run into the left field seats before the defensive miscues increased en masse.
“The line,” Schumaker said, “I don’t think gives Jack justice with how he really pitched.”
The same can be said for a defense that didn’t have an error.
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