HOUSTON — In the clubhouse after the Rangers lost 6-2 to the Astros on Sunday, manager Chris Woodward had a message to his team, which had just lost its sixth game in a row.
One, he wanted them to stay positive. But secondly, he told them he wanted the loss to hurt. He wanted the team to care. Another winnable game had turned into another devastating loss.
Between Martin and Joely Rodriguez, Rangers pitchers threw 41 pitches in the eighth inning. Five singles and a walk. Death by 1,000 paper cuts — a fitting end to a week defined by close losses.
“They have to keep their head up and let this sting a little bit,” Woodward said. “We’ve lost six in a row. I know everybody in that clubhouse was upset after the game. But I want that. I want them to be upset. That’s going to drive them a little bit.”
Just one week ago, the word “playoffs” entered into the Rangers vernacular. Khris Davis had purportedly predicated a day after his activation that it would be this Texas team’s fate.
The Rangers were in the middle of a hot streak then. A week later, they’re reeling. Six games on the road and six losses. Some close, some not. Some blown leads, some failed comebacks. Some days it was the pitching, others it was the offense.
Regardless of the culprit, the result is a cold dose of reality to wipe away that hard optimism just one Sunday ago.
It looked like the Rangers might’ve been able to salvage the finale when David Dahl hit a game-tying 427-foot bomb to center field. It was that big hit that’d been elusive all week.
But it was the last big hit of the day. The last big hit before the Astros forced Rodriguez — who hadn’t allowed a run in a month — to allow four in the eighth inning.
“There are good and bad things about having a young team,” said Rangers starting pitcher Kyle Gibson, who allowed two runs over seven innings. “Guys may not get attached to that type of a losing streak and will be able to turn it around.”
After the Rangers defeated the Mariners last Sunday, Woodward was asked about finally getting back to .500. It’d been somewhat elusive. They’d lost four consecutive chances prior to that to reach that mark
“It speaks for itself,” Woodward said of getting to 18-18. “We’re a .500 team now.”
Now the losing streak speaks for itself, too. It speaks to a young team that can get hot and get ice cold too.
It will take some serious heavy lifting if the Rangers will get back to that point. Up next is the Yankees and these same Astros over the next week. It will close out a stretch of 30 games in 31 days that have run the gamut in terms of quality of play.
The Rangers were outscored 33-17 over the last week. In some sense, the games felt close. It felt as though the team was a couple pitches or a couple hits away from actually winning.
Before the game, Woodward said he felt should have won three games this week. It’s a comment he often makes after close losses.
The Rangers could have won some of these games, maybe they should’ve. Now, though, they’re faced with the fact that they didn’t, and need to find a way to stop the bleeding.
“We do have to get a lot better in certain areas, pretty much in every aspect,” Woodward said. “We really haven’t played that good of baseball lately. A few mistakes are costing us. A few at-bats, a few pitches.”
