The Texas Rangers didn’t score a run but the Houston Astros scored eleven runs.
We’re all getting a great opportunity to learn the Ship of Theseus thought experiment in real time thanks to our favorite baseball team! If you remove the woefully underproducing players from the 2025 Texas Rangers lineup and replace them with different players, are they still the same 2025 Texas Rangers?
The answer appears to be yes.
It does not seem to matter who they send up there. Despite losing the entire heart of their
order to injury in recent weeks, it doesn’t much feel like anyone is actually gone as the replacements have inherited the original group’s uncanny ability to get as many runners on base as possible without scoring any runs.
The issue that has plagued the entire season came about again tonight against, admittedly, a difficult pitcher in Hunter Brown. Even so, the Rangers had opportunities throughout the early innings to get out ahead. Texas went 0-for-9 in RISP situations and left eight on base, instead. After those early innings, they stopped bothering to have runners on base entirely, ending with just four hits on the night.
Since Monday the Rangers are 1-for-37 with a chance to plate a run with a hit. They’ve collectively turned into Justin Foscue as a big leaguer when given a shot at capitalizing on a rally. The only successful attempt basically all week was last night’s game winner when the extra innings rules granted them the ability to take at-bats with RISP without even having to provide their own scorable runner. Heaven forbid they need to actually produce their own rally, too.
Anyway, the Rangers didn’t score and didn’t win and got blown out and got embarrassed and are now 1.5 games out of a playoff spot with the team ahead of them holding the tiebreaker. Before we concern ourselves with that, however, the Rangers are going to have to do the impossible task of getting a hit with runners on base.
Player of the Game: Pretty slim pickings tonight. The lineup wouldn’t get anyone to drive out to Dell Diamond, much less The Shed, and they hit like it in this one. As soon as the game felt like a loss cause, the soft underbelly of the bullpen came in and shoveled manure on the grave.
So we’re left with Jacob deGrom. He didn’t have a great start, at least not by his standards. He allowed two solo home runs and left after just 5.1 innings where an inherited run was eventually tacked onto his total. But he also had tantalizing swing-and-miss stuff and pitched well enough to potentially win if he weren’t on a team that features like nine dudes with a sub-.700 OPS in its lineup.
Up Next: The Arlington leg finale of the Silver Boot series will pit LHP Patrick Corbin for Texas against RHP Luis Garcia for Houston.
The Sunday afternoon first pitch from The Shed is set for 1:35 pm CT and will be aired on the Rangers Sports Network.
