'Just pitching': Heaney's reliability shines in finale

ARLINGTON -- Rangers manager Bruce Bochy walked out to the mound with two outs in the fifth, as if to remove starting pitcher Andrew Heaney from the game after a two-out double from Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson.

The chat was quick. Heaney said he barely knew what his manager was saying, instead focusing on the next batter, which resulted in a quick chuckle from catcher Jonah Heim before Bochy returned to the dugout with the southpaw remaining on the mound to face Adley Rutschman.

“I kind of made it awkward,” Heaney joked. “My brain was going a million miles an hour there. I'm just thinking about Adley and how I want to approach him. Boch got out there and he was trying to ask me like, ‘How are you doing, how are you feeling?’ I was just like, ‘Yeah, I'm good, Jonah, what do you want to do?’ I kind of was like trying to have two conversations at once. I made it awkward and I think we're all just kind of laughing.”

It was a risky move with Heaney nearing his season high in pitches, but the reward was worth it. Heaney got Rutschman to ground out to end the inning, also ending his first start of the second half.

“Boch came out to see how he was doing and Heaney kept interrupting him,” Heim said. “He was trying to get the scouting report down. I thought that was pretty funny and it kind of lightened the mood and got everybody on the same page, calmed everybody down and he made a big pitch when he needed to.”

Heaney carried the Rangers to a 3-2 win over the Orioles on Sunday afternoon, tossing five scoreless innings while limiting Baltimore’s high-powered offense to just two hits. His 100 pitches were a season high.

Heaney has only notched four wins this season, two of which have come against Baltimore.

“I thought we did the same thing off Heaney last time -- not much,” said Orioles manager Brandon Hyde. “We drove a couple balls there early in the game. He’s got kind of a unique arm slot. Really threw the ball in to righties, and we just didn’t do a whole lot offensively. Can’t really put my finger on it except we just didn’t swing the bat very well today.”

The run support gods have not been kind to Heaney this season. Though he entered the day having posted a 3.00 ERA over his last 14 games, he had received two or fewer runs of support in 11 of those starts.

On Sunday, Heaney’s run support came from his battery mate, Jonah Heim, who launched a three-run homer a Statcast-projected 400 feet in the fourth inning to give the Rangers their first lead of the entire series. Fortunately, that lead would hold.

“You pitch close games, you pitch blowouts, you pitch all kinds of different ones,” Heaney said of his lack of run support this season. “That doesn’t change anything for me. I'm happy for Jonah, happy for us to get a win and we just got to keep going.”

Despite what’s happened on the offensive side, Heaney has been one of the Rangers' best pitchers over the last two months. He’s posted a 2.81 ERA in 15 games (14 starts) since the beginning of May, dropping his season ERA from 6.26 to 3.60.

Heaney has now allowed three or fewer earned runs in all 14 starts over that span, the longest such streak of his career and longest by a Texas starting pitcher in a single season since Kyle Gibson from April 7-July 2, 2021. According to Stathead, Heaney is just the fourth left-handed pitcher in franchise history to allow three or fewer runs across 14 consecutive starts.

“I feel good mechanically,” Heaney said. “I just feel like I'm in a spot where I can attack and mix three pitches and kind of dump in a curveball every once in a while. So I've just been feeling like I'm pitching. Just pitching.”

With the Trade Deadline looming, the Rangers need to win every game they can to avoid selling off any players on July 30. Every win is important, but avoiding a sweep going into a four-game set against the American League’s worst team in the White Sox could go a long way.

“Every game is important,” Heaney said. “I don't want to sound cliché or like a broken record or whatever, but it really is. It's just got to be one game at a time. We got to go handle business. We got to get off to good starts, pitch the ball well, field the ball well, hit the ball well and good things will happen.”