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Rangers Notes: Road is Getting Rougher for Texas as Yankees Near

The Texas Rangers were unable to escape from Detroit with a series win, and that’s starting to become a norm to worry about.
Matt Postins|
Texas Rangers pitcher Jack Leiter.
Texas Rangers pitcher Jack Leiter. | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

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Texas Rangers

DETROIT — Texas Rangers starter Jack Leiter retired the first 12 batters he faced and struck out 10 to match his career high. He was pitching the best he had all season.

But the home run he allowed to Spencer Torkelson on a middle-middle slider in the fifth inning gave the Detroit Tigers a 2-0 lead and helped start the Rangers (16-18) on a slide toward a 7-1 loss on Sunday night.

Rangers manager Skip Schumaker felt that Leiter's line — 6.2 innings, five hits, five runs, one walk and 10 strikeouts — didn't tell the entire story of his game.

"The ball was coming out of his hand as good as I've seen this whole year," he said. "He had really carry behind it. I thought the change-up might have been the best he's had the whole year."

But it only yielded frustration for Leiter (1-3), who felt nothing change in his approach, even after the home run.

"All you try to do is attack, attack with your best stuff and I feel like I did a good job of that, a good job of the game plan," he said. The results just don't show it."

Leiter's night was indicative of playing on the road for Texas this season — frustrating. It gets no easier as they near a series with the best team in the American League, the New York Yankees, on Tuesday.

Texas is now 9-10 away from home. With Sunday’s loss, Texas has lost four of its last five, six of its last nine and nine of its last 14 on the road since a 4-1 start to the season in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Entering Sunday’s action, the Rangers were tied for the fourth best road record in baseball.

Even the best teams struggle away from home at times. But Texas hasn’t had a winning season on the road since 2016 and their nine-season streak without a .500 or better on the road is third longest in baseball.

Texas has been a better offensive team on the road this season. The splits say so and the production says so. But they haven’t won a road series since the first road trip of the season and it’s beginning to wear on a team that has struggled with offense at home and has been treading .500 for a month.

Worse, the Rangers haven’t won a series in the Bronx since 2017. Texas has lost 20 of its last 27 at Yankee Stadium since 2016 and is 19-39 all-time since the new stadium opened. With Texas facing the best team in the AL, followed by the red-hot Chicago Cubs at home this weekend, this could be a critical week for Texas in the context of not slipping further back in the AL West race.

Josh Jung Stays Hot

Josh Jung would probably be a shoo-in for American League player of the month for June if it wasn’t for Houston’s Yordan Alvarez. But Jung continued that torrid April right into May as he had hits in all three games of the Tigers series and extended his hit streak to 12 games.

Jung’s approach and production has been incredible to watch. He’s put the injury issues behind him and is batting like the hitter the Rangers hoped he would be when he made his MLB debut in 2022. A lot of it is hard work. Rangers manager Skip Schumaker sees it in everything Jung does now. It’s why he’s batting in the clean-up spot after batting in the No. 9 spot at one point.

He knows Jung started 0-fer for March. But he stuck with Jung and it’s paid off. One of the biggest issues with Jung the past couple of years has been his whiff rate and his strikeout rate. Per Statcast his whiff rate is 17.2% and his strikeout rate is 15.6%. Both are among the top rates in baseball.

“I think he’s been so disciplined in his approach,” Schumaker said. “I think he’s been using the middle of the field as well as anyone. [Saturday] he lined out twice to second. He stayed with his approach and still got a base hit on his third at-bat. It just shows you that just because it didn’t work doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stay with the approach.”

He’s not worried that Jung only has four home runs. He points to the third baseman’s 12 doubles as a great sign for the season.

“It’s a sign of maturity that he’s using the whole field,” Schumaker said. “When guys get super-hot, they start trying to juice [hit home runs].”

Rangers-Yankees Probables

Texas Rangers pitcher Nathan Eovaldi throws a baseball.
Texas Rangers pitcher Nathan Eovaldi. | Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

The New York Yankees haven’t set their probable pitchers yet for the series that starts on Tuesday, as they have one more game with Baltimore on Monday. But the Rangers have set their, per their game notes:

Tuesday: RHP Jacob deGrom (2-1, 2.01)

Wednesday: RHP Nathan Eovaldi (3-4, 4.76)

Thursday: LHP MacKenzie Gore (2-2, 4.67)

Assuming the Yankees stay on time, the Rangers will avoid two of the pitchers they faced last week in Arlington — left-hander Max Fried and right-hander Cam Schlittler. Texas lost both of those starts.

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Rangers Tweets of the Day

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Matthew Postins
MATT POSTINS

Matthew Postins is an award-winning sports journalist who covers Major League Baseball for OnSI. He also covers the Big 12 Conference for Heartland College Sports.

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