SAN FRANCISCO ¨C If you manage in the Major Leagues for 28 seasons, you are going to witness your lineups slog through desolate stretches. Bruce Bochy has seen more than he would have preferred, even with good hitters on teams that won championships.
Thus, if his quotes on the subject sound cliched, they can¡¯t be written off when they are grounded in his personal history of the game¡¯s ups and downs.
¡°We¡¯re going to bounce back,¡± Bochy said Sunday after another parched afternoon for the Rangers hitters set the stage for a bizarre ending and a 3-2 loss to the Giants. ¡°During the course of a season you¡¯re going to have stretches where things don¡¯t go right and you lose tough ones. The good clubs, they bounce back. You get home and regroup and see if we can start putting more runs on the board.¡±
The Rangers scored two runs in each of the three games in San Francisco and lost twice. If not for a dominating night by Nathan Eovaldi and the bullpen in their 2-0 series-opening victory they might have been swept.
They went 2-4 through their tour of Northern California and return home for another crack at the Athletics, who took two of the three from the Rangers in West Sacramento to start the trip.
¡°Tough series. Tough road trip,¡± Bochy said. ¡°We got walked off, what, three times? That¡¯s always a tough deal. In this game you¡¯ve got to be resilient, though. There were some good things today where the bats were better. We just didn¡¯t execute with men on base as well as we needed to.¡±
Sunday¡¯s loss surely will be remembered for Heliot Ramos¡¯ ¡°Little League home run¡± that ended it in the ninth inning.
Ramos dribbled the ball to the left of the mound. Reliever Luke Jackson made a nice play to grab it but threw wildly to first. When first baseman Jake Burger retrieved the ball far behind the bag in foul territory, he heaved a throw that sailed past third base, allowing Ramos to score easily on a belly slide at the plate.
A look inside the weeds, though, reveals some developments that could be more important long-term.
Jack Leiter had no blister issues upon his return from the injured list, although he lasted just 3 1/3 innings. He walked three in the first inning, including Wilmer Flores with the bases loaded and needed 37 pitches to get three outs. That was about half his predetermined limit. But he prevented a big inning that could have buried the team from the start.
The Rangers did have 10 hits and, in Bochy¡¯s mind, their best at-bats in a while. Nine came with two strikes.
¡°When guys get hits with two strikes the way they did today, that¡¯s something they can build on,¡± Bochy said. ¡°It¡¯s an area we were having our struggles with. What you want to do in this game is create more opportunities, and we did it today.
Nevertheless, only one hit bore fruit, a two-run Marcus Semien single in the first inning that followed doubles by Burger and Joc Pederson. Burger advanced just one base on Pederson¡¯s double past third base after hesitating to ensure Matt Chapman wouldn¡¯t glove it.
Pederson, whose bat has finally awakened after his 0-for-41 dive, also tripled to start the sixth inning of a 2-2 game. Adolis Garc¨ªa, Semien and Nick Ahmed all had a shot to get Pederson home and change the game¡¯s trajectory. But as hitters often do when the team is starved for runs, they expanded the zone and allowed reliever Hayden Birdsong to escape with a strikeout, a groundout and a popout.
The Rangers also squandered a two-out double by Leody Taveras in the seventh, when Josh Smith followed with a grounder to third.