HOUSTON _ The mood in the Rangers' clubhouse Friday after the most recent roster disaster: Eerily quiet.
Well, it was until players started emulating, shall we say, the noise of a whoopee cushion while some of their younger teammates _ and there are now a lot of them _ were trying to power their way through interviews.
At least they haven't lost their sense of humor.
They may need it.
With Elvis Andrus and his club-sized boom box the latest disabled list casualties, the Rangers rough start may only get tougher. On Friday, though they actually rallied to momentarily tie the game, the Rangers fell to Houston 3-2. It was their fifth straight loss and dropped the team to 4-11 through 15 games, matching their worst-ever 15 game start. They have never reached the 16-game mark at 4-12.
The Rangers fell behind 2-0 on a pair of George Springer homers, tied it in the seventh on homers by Joey Gallo and Robinson Chirinos and then fell behind in the eighth when rookie Drew Robinson's three-base error allowed the go-ahead run to score from first.
Along the way, the Rangers struck out 17 times against Gerrit Cole and a trio of relievers. They went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position to fall to .198 for those situations this season; Adrian Beltre, who grounded out with the go-ahead run on base in the eighth, is hitless in 10 RISP at-bats this season.
The list of ugly stats goes on and on, but what is quickly becoming clear is that this season is not about the stats of the present, but growth for the future. It is about rebuilding. Nobody will use that word, but it was plainly evident Friday with a starting lineup that had six players aged 25 or younger, including two (Ronald Guzman and Isiah Kiner-Falefa) who were making their first major league starts.
"Is this what, from the beginning, everybody thought they would turn on their TV and see?" Rangers manager Jeff Banister asked rhetorically. "It is a fresh opportunity for a number of young guys to get some playing time for an extended period of time and put some winning baseball attributes together."
Part of that learning how to win is learning from the mistakes that contribute to losses.
Robinson learned that lesson Friday.
With the score tied at two, veteran reliever Kevin Jepsen walked Evan Gattis with one out in the eighth inning. After Gattis was replaced by pinch runner Derek Fisher, Marwin Gonzalez lined a single to center. Robinson, trying to keep the go-ahead run from going from first to third, charged the shallow single hard, but the ball got underneath his glove. Fisher scored easily. Gonzalez wound up at third.
"Just going through these games and getting the understanding that the margin in major league games is very thin is important," Banister said. "Mistakes are very challenging at this level. But it's good for them to get the feeling of what it's like when the game gets challenging at this level.
"Drew was tying to make an aggressive baseball play," Banister added. "I'm not going to fault our guys for going hard for a ball. It was a plus effort and sometimes things just happen that way."
The highlights for the young players were that both Kiner-Falefa and Guzman each recorded their first major-league hits. They were not insignificant. After Gerrit Cole retired the first eight batters, five on strikeouts, Kiner-Falefa hit a grounder to deep short and beat it out for an infield single. Guzman walked in the fifth to become the Rangers second baserunner of the night. In the ninth, he singled with one out off Chris Devenski to put the tying run on base.
For Banister, it is important for the players to understand the long-range plan, but to focus on the immediate task in front of them: The game at hand.
"There are two ways to look at this," Banister said of the Rangers' situation. "You can look through a telescope and way out there and see way out there beyond and miss out on all the things right in front of you. We can sharpen our focus, simplify what we need to do, look inside of what we need to do. The message is it only takes all of us. They will continue to get that."
