ARLINGTON - It appears starting pitching can actually be contagious. One night Jon Gray says the heck with it, just starts firing pitches and gets results. The next night: Andrew Heaney does the same. And what do you know, you’ve got an epidemic of quality starts running through the clubhouse.
Now, can anybody isolate whatever it is the pitchers have caught and pass it on to the Rangers’ offense?
Patient Zero: Corey Seager.
Seager wasn’t the reason the Rangers lost 1-0 to Washington Wednesday, at least not the sole reason. The Rangers twice loaded the bases with no outs and managed not to score a runner and left 11 men on base. Despite going 0 for 4 with a flailing game-ending strikeout, he was responsible for only one of the LOBs. But he is the center of the Rangers offense and it seems fair to say that until he gets going, the Rangers don’t. It is May. Seager is hitting .227 with a .615 OPS.
“This is not about one guy,” manager Bruce Bochy said afterward. “We had different guys up in different situations with the bases loaded and we just couldn’t get it done. It was just a night where things eluded us. It’s hard to explain.”
Well, some of it isn’t that hard to explain. The first bases-loaded situation short-circuited perhaps because of rookie aggressiveness. Wyatt Langford, at times a bit passive at the plate in April, went after a first-pitch slider, resulting in a roller to third for a force at home. on a first-pitch slider, tapped it softly to third base, leading to a force out at home. Jonah Heim struck out. And No. 9 hitter Leody Taveras grounded out.
The second was stranger: After Seager took a walk to load the bases in the fifth, No. 3 hitter Nathaniel Lowe tapped back to the mound for the force out and then Adolis García, the team’s RBI collector, struck out. Couldn’t blame that one on rookies still adjusting.
This month has not been the worst of Seager’s career, but it’s certainly in the conversation. In 2017, his second full season in the majors, he had a four-week stretch in which he had a .530 OPS late in the year.
He finished his first season with the Rangers in 2022 awash in a sea of frustration that led to a .623 OPS over a 28-game stretch from Sept. 1 through Oct 4.
“I don’t care how good you are - and I’ve been fortunate to have some great hitters like Tony Gwynn and Barry Bonds - but you just have moments where you get spoiled by how good they are,” Bochy said. “The numbers could be better than what they are. But he’s made some hard outs. And he’s raised the bar so high that we all just expect to see it [immediately]. We will see it. I have no concerns.”
The Rangers expected there to be some kind of adjustment period for Seager this season after he missed almost all of spring training while still recovering from surgery to repair a sports hernia. He spent the last week of spring training huddled with his private hitting instructor Shawn Wooten, with whom he speaks daily during the year, doing a crash course in ramping up. But Seager also rebuilds his swing every day with Wooten via Facetime sessions during the year. He puts a lot of work into maintaining the swing and approach, as he detailed to ESPN last month.
He also acknowledged as far back as 10 days ago in Atlanta that, yes, he would have benefitted from spring training at-bats. Didn’t say he wasn’t ready. But he acknowledged that he is the kind of hitter who gets a lot from spring training at-bats.
He has spent the last 10 days in long pre-game sessions to try to find the swing. It simply has not happened. On Wednesday, Bochy sat in on a pre-game meeting on the state of Seager’s swing.
“He’s still finding his timing,” Bochy said without going into more detail.
Perhaps at some point, the meticulous Seager will take the same approach the last two Rangers starting pitchers have, which is to basically stop thinking about so much and just start firing strikes.
A night earlier Gray got out of his own way, simplifying his thought process and attacking the strike zone to hold the Nationals to a run on three hits in eight sharp innings. It was the best outing of the season by a Rangers starter. Heaney gave him a run on Wednesday, going seven innings, allowing four hits and a run without a walk.
The Rangers did not have consecutive games last year in which the starter went at least seven innings, didn’t allow a walk and was charged with one or zero runs. The last time it happened: June 16-17, 2022 against Detroit when Gray and Martín Pérez pitched back-to-back gems.
The only run scored on consecutive hits with two strikes. Heaney got ahead of Ildemaro Vargas 0-2 with one out in the second, then tried to go above the zone for a chase, but Vargas went up top with him to line a double off the wall in left. It was the Nationals’ first extra-base hit of the series. Heaney got ahead of the net hitter, Andrew Call, 0-2 also, but then left a 1-2 slider in the zone. It was down, but not far enough. And Call singled to score the run.
“Sometimes you have room for error,” said Heaney. “Sometimes you don’t.”
Until Seager and the offense find their way, there simply isn’t room for error.
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