Bruce Bochy on the Texas Rangers’ loss to the Mariners: ‘It just didn’t go our way’

ARLINGTON — A lot can go right in baseball. A lot can go wrong in baseball. Sometimes, even, a lot can go right and things can still go wrong.

If you’ve had a hard time following that logic, the Texas Rangers’ 4-3 loss to the Seattle Mariners on Thursday at Globe Life Field might serve as an apt explainer.

“It just didn’t go our way today,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “But we played well.”

He isn’t entirely wrong. Among the examples of well-played baseball that didn’t work in the Rangers’ favor:

• Starting pitcher Andrew Heaney pitched six efficient innings. He struck out seven batters, walked none and threw 59 of his 79 pitches for strikes. It was his deepest start of the year and his cleanest since his season debut against the Tampa Bay Rays on April 2. A pair of two-run home runs — one to Ty France in the first inning and another to Luis Urias in the fifth — rendered an otherwise fine start a loss though. “Solo homers don’t beat you,” Heaney said. “Two-runs can.”
• Along those lines: Two of the Rangers’ three runs came via solo home runs. Nathaniel Lowe, in his fifth game back since his reinstatement from the injured list, belted a Luis Castillo slider into the Texas bullpen for a 1-0 lead. Batters had hit just .100 on Castillo’s slider this season. Josh Smith, in the fourth inning, turned on a Castillo fastball and hit it into the right field stands for his first home run of the season to tie the score at 2.
• Why didn’t the Rangers have more runners on base? In part because of some rough luck. Texas’ three hardest-hit balls resulted in four outs. Adolis Garcia ripped a 111.8 mph groundball in the third inning that the Mariners turned for an inning-ending double play. Wyatt Langford — one at-bat after Smith’s home run in the fourth — lined out to Urias at third base on a 108.8 mph drive. A first-inning Corey Seager flyball carried an exit velocity of 108.6 mph and an expected batting average of .770, but right fielder Mitch Haniger tracked it down at the wall.

Even the Rangers’ bullpen — which began the day with the ninth-worst ERA in baseball (4.36) — was magnificent. Cole Winn extended his scoreless and hitless streak to six innings to begin his major league career and struck out four batters. Josh Sborz, who was activated from the injured list on Thursday morning, pitched a perfect ninth.

“I feel really good, actually,” said Winn, a former first-round draft pick who has a 7-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his first four MLB appearances. “It’s been a wild ride, for sure, [but] the only thing I’m focused on out there is executing pitches, and it’s happening more often than not right now.”

The late-game offense just couldn’t push across one more run to tie the score. Langford reached first base on an error in the seventh and later scored on a Marcus Semien single to cut Seattle’s lead to 4-3. Seager, with runners on the corners, tried to hold back his swing on a high Gabe Speier fastball, but third base umpire Dan Merzel ruled that he crossed the plane and rung him up for the third out of the inning.

“The game was a clean ballgame,” Bochy said. “We hit some hard balls ... Adolis smokes that ball, double play, things like that.”

Texas, largely, has successfully treaded water and maintained a winning pace with three starting pitchers (Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom and Tyler Mahle) an All-Star third baseman (Josh Jung) and Gold Glove, Silver Slugger-winning first baseman (Lowe) on the injured list for either the entirety or majority of the regular season.

Still, though, the Rangers have struggled to capitalize on potentially momentous opportunities through the season’s first month. A win Thursday would’ve been their first series win vs. an AL West opponent this season. Instead, the loss dropped them to 0-3-1 against division foes. A win Thursday would’ve lifted them to two games over .500 and kept them atop the division standings. Instead, it’s back to .500 and a half-game behind the Mariners.

“You want to win series, especially in our division,” Bochy said. “But they played well today, it was a good ballgame. A bounce here or there, it’s a different game. But we’ve still got to do all we can to go out and get the series, and we did that today. We just came up a little bit short.”

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