ARLINGTON — There’s no minimum organizational tenure that a player must meet to dissect a freefall. Those with the freshest of eyes, in fact, might provide the most-unique perspective on the matter.
Consider Merrill Kelly’s last 52 days. The veteran right-hander watched, after the July 31 trade that sent him from the Arizona Diamondbacks to the Texas Rangers, as his new team tumbled from contention. He then watched as that same club willed itself back into the playoff race thanks to anonymous rookies that fueled an undermanned clubhouse and sparked an improbable run.
He’s now watched a rapid disintegration.
“Nobody could have anticipated losing seven after how well we were playing,” Kelly said. “That’s kind of the funny-slash-terrible part about baseball.”
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The Rangers now exist on the terrible end of the sport’s dichotomy. They were swept this weekend by the nearly eliminated Miami Marlins, capped by Sunday’s 4-2 loss at Globe Life Field, and have lost seven consecutive games at the most important juncture of their season.
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The American League West title is officially out of their reach after a second-straight series loss via sweep dropped them to seven-and-a-half games back of the Seattle Mariners with six to play. Their outright postseason chances are not all that far behind.
“That’s baseball,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “There’s other teams, you see really good teams, that are struggling now. It’s hard to explain what happens, but, it’s happened to us. You get in these funks and it seems like you can’t do anything right. That’s kind of been the case here.”
They technically trail the Houston Astros by five-and-a-half games for the third Wild Card berth and trail the Boston Red Sox by six for the second. The Astros, though, own the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Rangers and would advance if the two teams finished with the same record. The Cleveland Guardians stand between the two and hold a five-game advantage over the Rangers.
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The Rangers, according to FanGraphs, have a zero percent chance to qualify for the postseason. That’s only inaccurate mathematically. They’ll be officially eliminated if both the Astros and Red Sox win their Sunday night games. Their lone hope lies in the potential and unlikely failure of those in front of them. If both the Astros and Red Sox lose out, and if the Rangers win out, they could leapfrog into the postseason.
Or, in other words, both must experience the same caliber of collapse that the Rangers endured in their last seven games.
“Baseball is one of those games where it’s hard to play really, really good for a long period of time,” left fielder Wyatt Langford said after his sixth-inning solo home run provided half of the club’s offense Sunday afternoon. “We kind of just fell apart these last couple of games.”
The Rangers won 8 of their first 11 games in September — and, immediately before this drought, six straight — to pull within two games of a playoff spot before a three-game set against the Astros at Daikin Park. Kelly retrospectively classified it as a “make or break series” that served as “the telling point of where we were going to end up.”
The Rangers broke, lost all three, returned home with an even larger hill to climb and dropped three straight to a team that remains eligible for the playoffs only because the Rangers allowed them life.
That, to Kelly’s point, is an unexpected fall. It wasn’t entirely unpredictable, he acknowledged, given the circumstances that helped create the team’s nothing-to-lose and why-not-us mindset in the first place.
“I think it’s tough sledding when you have one of your top starters out, when you have your star shortstop, star second baseman out,” Kelly said after a start that didn’t last past the fifth inning. “I think that’s a heavy load to put on the young guys at the time. When they first came up, you talk about ‘the book’ getting out in the league, and I think that’s what happened.”
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Outfielder Michael Helman, a key cog of the aptly named Little Rascals, has slashed just .158/.200/.158 in his last seven games. Rookie infielder Cody Freeman has undoubtedly shined in moments — like, on Sunday, when he drove in the club’s second run with a sixth-inning single — but owns just a .589 OPS in the last two weeks.
That unintentional youth movement, though, was not intended to singlehandedly carry the Rangers into the playoffs while right-hander Nathan Eovaldi (shoulder), shortstop Corey Seager (appendectomy) and second baseman Marcus Semien (foot) sit on the injured list.
The incumbent starters, and those who remained healthy, were. The offensive underperformance is reflective of the brand that plunged the Rangers into a hole to begin with.
Shortstop Josh Smith is 2 for his last 22 and was demoted from the leadoff spot before Saturday’s loss. First baseman Jake Burger played his way out of the everyday lineup with seven strikeouts in three games against the Astros last week. Right fielder Adolis García, who sat Sunday with a not-entirely-healed quad injury, is 1 for 18 since he returned from the injured list.
Catcher Jonah Heim, catcher Kyle Higashioka and designated hitter Joc Pederson are a combined 0 for 11 with runners in scoring position in the last seven games.
“We have lost some momentum,” Bochy said. “We’re in a funk.”
And without a runway to escape it.
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