Rangers Fall to Royals in First Spring Training Game

The Texas Rangers began their 2023 spring training schedule with a 6-5 loss to the Kansas City Royals at the teams’ shared complex in Surprise, Ariz. Below is a wrap-up of the game.

Kansas City Royals 6, Texas Rangers 5 (Box Score)

How the Royals won: Kansas City’s Tucker Bradley hit a walk-off home run off of the Texas Rangers’ Marc Church in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Records: Kansas City, 1-0; Texas, 0-1.

Winning pitcher: Ryan Weiss (KC, 1-0).

Losing pitcher: Marc Church (TEX, 0-1).

Rangers at the plate: Texas scored three runs in the top of the second, and one each in the top of the seventh and top of the eighth. Robbie Grossman’s two-run home run in the top of the second was one of two home runs for the Rangers. Justin Foscue hit a solo home run in the top of the seventh.

Catcher Sandy Leon was the only Rangers player that had two hits in the game. He went 2-for-2 with an RBI. Third baseman Josh Jung and catcher Sam Huff were the only Rangers hitters with a double.

The Rangers used 19 different position players in the game.

Rangers on the mound: Starter Glenn Otto threw two innings in his spring debut, giving up one hit and two runs while striking out five and walking one. The one hit he allowed was a two-run home run to Kansas City’s Vinnie Pasquantino in the top of the first inning.

José Leclerc, John King, Jake Latz, Chase Lee and Cody Bradford all scored a scoreless inning for the Rangers.

Owen White, in his spring debut for the Rangers, gave up three hits, two runs and two walks in 2/3 innings before he was relieved. But it wasn’t all on White.

Owen White gave up singles to Salvador Pérez & Vinnie Pasquantino, then struck out Franmil Reyes, got Johan Camargo to ground into what should’ve been an inning-ending double play, walked Kyle Isbel to load ‘em and got Nate Eaton to pop into what prob. should’ve been an out in RF
— Levi Weaver (@ThreeTwoEephus) February 24, 2023

Church gave up the walk-off home run facing his first hitter.

On the rules

Plenty of rules changes. Here are a few tweets from the game to reinforce what happened with the rules changes.

How the pitch clock can impact the speed of the game:

Time of game for Padres-Mariners: 2 hours, 29 minutes.

Time of game for Rangers-Royals: 2 hours, 33 minutes.

This is spring training and a minuscule sample. But it's hard to understate how drastically the pitch clock is going to change baseball.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) February 24, 2023

How a pitcher can be impacted if they exceed the pitch clock:

John King has been assessed an automatic ball for taking too long on the pitch clock.
— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) February 24, 2023

How the shift ban is impacting hitters and fielders:

What Corey Seager sees now when he hits pic.twitter.com/iR1jIwb97H
— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) February 24, 2023

Here’s an inning in less than three minutes:

Welcome to MLB with a pitch clock. Daniel Lynch retiring the Rangers in order in less than 3 minutes pic.twitter.com/sajJjaFCAl
— Joel Goldberg (@goldbergkc) February 24, 2023

You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard

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