ARLINGTON — There’d be no quiet treatment for this first career major league home run. Not one this electric, and certainly not one that offers up an opportunity for, uh, some jokes.
“Everyone just told me,” Rangers rookie Wyatt Langford recalled Sunday after the Rangers’ 4-3 win vs. the Cincinnati Reds. “Good job staying on your feet.”
Langford, the Rangers’ No. 5 prospect according to MLB Pipeline, leads all American League rookies with 25 base hits. He’s deftly navigated an incredibly stingy strike zone that umpires have dealt him. He made a highlight-reel catch on Thursday vs. the Seattle Mariners. He’s batted in the heart of the order more often than not for the reigning World Series champions.
He also made his first lowlight-reel blunder on Wednesday when, in an attempt to stretch a double into a triple, he stumbled in between second and third base and was tagged out. Hence Sunday’s jokes about balance and uprightedness.
Call that a rookie mistake. Call what happened on Sunday a reason for the rookie’s presence.
Cincinnati left-hander Andrew Abbott, in the eighth pitch of a first-inning at-bat, threw a 93.9 mph fastball on the far side of the strike zone that Langford belted 378 feet into right field. The ball bounced by the wall of the Rangers’ bullpen and careened past Cincinnati right fielder Jake Fraley. Langford, with Jonah Heim (single) on base ahead of him, skirted around the bases and slide into home plate for an unconventional first career major league home run and a 4-0 lead for the Rangers.
He became the first Rangers since locker mate Josh Smith (July 11, 2022) to record their first major league home run on an inside-the-parker.
“Once it hit that wall, I said to [hitting coach] Donnie [Ecker], that’s an inside-the-parker, because he can run,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “I know that was a big home run for him, I’m sure he’s glad to get that goose egg off the board ... just missed one out, we thought it was out in fact.”
So did Langford.
“That’s why I was taking it a little slow out of the box,” he said.
Oh, yeah, Langford didn’t exactly turn on the jets until he reached second base and glanced into the outfield and saw the ball rolling across the warning track. He still reached home in 15.18 seconds, the fifth-fastest home-to-home time by a Ranger in the StatCast era (2015). Langford, whose 29.6 feet-per-second sprint speed ranks 11th in baseball, became the first player in the last 30 years to have his first career hit be an infield single and his first career home run be an inside-the-parker.
“When I was running towards third, and I just saw [third base coach Tony Beasley] giving me the wave,” Langford said. “So I kept running.”
His legs churned so quickly that even Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz — who boasts one of the strongest arms in baseball — didn’t even try to throw him out at home on a relay pass from Fraley. It wouldn’t have been a close play anyways. Langford ran like someone determined to break a drought.
Langford, a renowned power hitting phenom who the Rangers drafted fourth overall last July, had gone an unexpectedly-long 26 games and 98 bats without his first home run. He hit 47 in three seasons at Florida, 10 in his first professional season last year in the minor leagues and 6 this spring in the Cactus League.
“It’s just a matter of getting that first one, I guess,” Langford said. “I got it in a weird way, but I got it.”
He got it, and, in turn, the Rangers got something that they’d desperately needed: a fast start, and some extra-base slugging with runners on base. Texas’ usually-potent offense had laid somewhat dormant since an April 13 loss to the Houston Astros. The Rangers, in between then and Saturday’s 8-4 loss to Cincinnati, ranked second-to-last leaguewide in on base percentage (.276) and were bottom-third in batting average (.227) and runs scored (49). Of their nine home runs prior to Sunday’s game, eight were solo shots.
Until Sunday.
First baseman Nathaniel Lowe laced a two-out single off of Abbott to set up right fielder Adolis García for a two-run home run in the next at-bat that gave the Rangers a 2-0 lead. Heim singled in the next at-bat, then Langford turned up the electricity.
“We really needed that,” Langford said. “That’s kind of the Rangers’ M.O., I feel like, getting out early and keep putting pressure on them.”
The Rangers still totaled just two more hits in the following eight innings, a sign that the offense still hasn’t quite worked itself into a rhythym. They had just one in the first eight innings of Saturday’s loss before a four-run rally in the ninth. It took 5 and 1/3 innings of one-run ball from starter Dane Dunning and another shutdown performance from the back end of the Rangers’ bullpen (David Robertson, Jacob Latz and Kirby Yates combined for three scoreless frames) to maintain Sunday’s lead.
“We talked about that before the game,” Bochy said. “It’d be nice to score in the first inning and work with the lead. They gave us that — I didn’t think it’d have to hold up, but it did.”
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