What is the story about?
Braves
15, Rangers 1
- Starting off the second half with a big ol’ trash can game is not a great omen.
- Is it better or worse than ending the first half with a trash can game, though?
- Starting the second half this way is a big let down, but then you have another game the next day. We move on.
- Ending the first half with this sort of clunker would leave the funk lingering for the four days where the Rangers don’t play. It would mean a miasma of disaster hanging over everyone during the break.
- The good news is that the Mariners and Astros both lost.
- The Mariners got shut out by the San Francisco Giants, 7-0, and only had two hits.
- The Giants are one of the worst teams in baseball. They’ve been terrible all season. The hiring of Tony Vitello, a college coach who had never worked for a professional franchise before, has not worked out at all.
- So at least the Rangers got stomped by an actual good team, a first place team with the third best record in the majors right now.
- And at least the Rangers are still 1.5 games up in the American League West.
- Houston lost 3-2 to the Orioles, which means that they are still 3 games back in the division.
- Now that I look at it, every American League West team lost.
- The Angels, who currently have the worst record in baseball, lost in especially dispiriting fashion. Reid Detmers gave them six shutout innings. They took a 1-0 lead into the ninth.
- And their closer, our old friend Kirby Yates, hit a batter in the ninth, walked a batter in the ninth, and gave up a two run double to Hao-Yu Lee. It ended up being a 2-1 loss for Anaheim.
- The Northern California A’s, meanwhile, got curbstomped by the Washington Nationals, 23-4.
- Someone named Yunior Tur made his major league debut for the A’s and gave up 6 runs and seven hits. Someone else named Brady Basso threw a scoreless inning and lowered his ERA on the season to 10.13.
- Carlos Cortes, that dude who beat up on the Rangers pitching earlier this year, pitched the ninth and gave up five runs. At least Kyle Higashioka, the Rangers’ position player who pitched, only gave up three runs.
- The Nationals also used a position player to pitch the ninth, in the rare instance of a team bringing in a position player with a lead. Jorbit Vivas allowed just two runs, meaning he did better than Higashioka, I guess.
- And only one of Vivas’s two runs allowed was earned, because Nasim Nunez made an error behind him that put a runner on who ended up scoring.
- Nasim Nunez is leading the majors in stolen bases, with 35. He’s only been thrown out 4 times.
- Nunez has a fascinating .247/.330/.295 slash line on the year. He has 59 singles, four doubles, three triples and a homer.
- The paltry number of extra base hits is kind of remarkable because you’d think, as fast as he is, he’d leg out more than four doubles by this point in the season.
- You are probably thinking to yourself, Blogamemnon, while I acknowledge that these are thoughts that you are expressing, they are not on this 15-1 Rangers loss, or, really, any 15-1 Rangers loss.
- And I would have to concede that point. But is that really a bad thing?
- This is only the fourth 15-1 loss in team history. The last time the Rangers lost 15-1 was in September 2021, a terrible season, and we were actively trying to avoid paying attention to the team by that point in the very bad season.
- Here’s who pitched for the Rangers in that game: Spencer Howard, Wes Benjamin, A.J. ALexy, Hyeon-jong Yang, and Charlie Culberson.
- I had completely forgotten about Hyeon-jong Yang.
- The Rangers also lost 15-1 in 1973, to the White Sox, and in 1993, to the Red Sox.
- That 1993 game against Boston is actually an important historical footnote. Jose Canseco pitched the ninth inning for the Rangers, allowed three runs, and tore his UCL. He missed a stretch of games, returned and tried to play for a couple of weeks, but then ultimately was shut down for the year due to Tommy John surgery.
- It was also the next to last game that Robb Nen pitched for the Rangers. He gave up five runs. Not long after he was traded to the Marlins, along with Kurt Miller, for Cris Carpenter, in one of the all time bad trades in Rangers history.
- At least Emiliano Teodo got to make his major league debut in this game.
- He wasn’t good, and isn’t ready to be in the majors right now, but he’s got a major league line now, even if it features an 18.00 ERA.
- Elias Diaz had a 106.0 mph single. Nicky Lopez had a 101.0 mph single. Josh Jung had a 100.0 mph fly out.
- Cal Quantrill hit 95.6 mph with his sinker, averaging 93.8 mph. Emiliano Teodo’s sinker touched 101.9 mph. Gavin Collyer topped out at 97.7 mph with his fastball. Ben Peoples reached 96.9 mph with his fastball. Kyle Higashioka threw 20 eephuses and two fastballs, with the fastball topping out at 61.9 mph.
- Let’s bin this one and move on.
