Rangers' Chris Woodward: 2-9 Start Might Be 'The Best Thing That Happened To This Group'
ARLINGTON, Texas — No team wants to start 2-9. It doesn't matter if a team is rebuilding or primed for a World Series run. Dropping game after game can be demoralizing, and in turn, derail everything happening beneath the surface.
The Texas Rangers have faced this adversity early on. However, while the mood on social media would have made any bystander presume the sky was falling in Arlington, manager Chris Woodward took it as an opportunity to challenge his team to answer some hard questions.
"We had to look inside of ourselves and figure out, this group in particular, what's their identity? What do we stand for? What do we go out there for as a team? It's a good group of guys, but we needed to find our competitive spirit a little bit as a team," Woodward said on Monday.
"To a man, they're super competitive, and they're good players. But as a group, how do we find that? I think that forced us to early on. So that might be, looking back, the best thing that happened to this group."
The work done by the front office in the offseason has widened the level of experience in the Rangers clubhouse. You look at one side and see Kole Calhoun and Corey Seager, two players who have trophies on the shelf at home. You look to another side, and you have a crop of players like Nathaniel Lowe, Brett Martin and Joe Barlow who are at various stages of establishing themselves in the big leagues.
One thing that cuts through any level of experience is the pressure to perform. Younger guys want to keep earning that Major League paycheck while big-money guys are trying to live up to theirs.
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The Rangers have dealt with that early on as inexperienced players are trying to prove themselves worthy of a spot on the team when the Rangers finally go all in on a push to the postseason. Meanwhile, Seager and Marcus Semien have each had their own struggles after ownership committed $500 million to bring them to Texas. After a hot start, Seager has three hits—all singles—in his last 20 at-bats, and Semien has a .500 OPS with no home runs through 15 games.
At 2-9, the Rangers needed results. Period. They had some bad luck with a lot of hard-hit balls finding gloves instead of holes. At some point, it had to stop being an excuse with the losses piled up.
"We have to find a way to win games when luck's not on our side," Woodward said. "And that's just being resilient and continuing the fight, not quitting. Maybe you win a game 2-1 because of it. But then all of a sudden, we get the breaks and then we can win 8-1 like we did in Oakland."
The Rangers answered the skipper's challenge and fought back. On the precipice of a 2-10 start, Texas climbed back from a 5-0 deficit on Thursday in Seattle and won, 8-6. Then they piled on two more wins, thanks to one huge inning on offense and two stellar pitching performances.
"It was huge. We needed that," Woodward said. "Obviously, you don't want to get too far down early on. Weird things happen early in the season. But the guys weren't gonna quit. They were gonna fight."
Now the Rangers are back home, and things are about to get tougher as they welcome the Houston Astros and defending World Series champion Atlanta Braves to town. The bats cooled off over the past two games. There's 147 games remaining in the long season ahead. This team will continue to be challenged. But, as they did on the West Coast—which has been a thorn in this club's side over the past couple seasons—the Rangers need to maintain that resiliency.
"I don't know what that looks like as we move forward through this year, but this group is going to play together for a while," Woodward said. "There's some guys here that signed some long-term contracts. So they're going to be together. And getting through a tough stretch like that right out of the gate, may have been the best thing for them, to be honest, as we look long term."
