Bradford solid, but defending champs in deep hole

ARLINGTON -- The Rangers’ precarious position in the standings is not quite orders of magnitude worse than it was before their 3-2 loss to the Twins on Thursday night. But the defending World Series champions now see double digits in the standings in two conspicuously troublesome places.

Falling to 10 games below .500 and 10 games behind in the American League West symbolized the Rangers’ “tougher climb” to playoff contention, to use manager Bruce Bochy’s words.

“You never know in this game -- that’s why you keep going hard, and that’s what we will do,” Bochy said. “Sure, it makes it more difficult to go to 10 games. A lot has to happen. No. 1, what has to happen is, we’ve got to win ballgames.”

The Rangers were close to doing that Thursday at Globe Life Field thanks to a dogged outing from starter Cody Bradford, who allowed two earned runs in six innings. But closer Kirby Yates, entering a tie game in the top of the ninth, walked two Minnesota batters with one out and gave up the winning run on Carlos Santana’s sacrifice fly.

Yates’ slip-up proved costly as the Rangers’ offense, which had been mostly absent since the first few minutes of the game, went down in order in the ninth. The Texas lineup failed to produce anything after the first two hitters scored the Rangers’ only runs of the night. Marcus Semien led off with an an infield single and Josh Smith walked, setting up Adolis García’s RBI single and Josh Jung’s sacrifice fly.

“We just couldn’t get much going after the first inning,” Bochy said. “We had a couple chances there ... it’s a tough one.”

What solace the Rangers had Thursday night came from Bradford, who battled deeper into a game, in terms of pitches, than he ever had in his previous 13 career starts. He finished with 104 pitches, including 29 in a grueling sixth inning.

Bradford walked the leadoff hitter in that frame and needed nine pitches to strike out the next hitter, Willi Castro, who fouled off four two-strike pitches before Bradford got him swinging on a fastball up in the zone. Kyle Farmer singled, but Bochy stayed with Bradford. The manager’s faith in the young lefty paid off -- eventually -- as Bradford had to battle through 12 more pitches to get the final two outs on fly balls.

Bochy was practically standing on the balls of his feet on the top step of the dugout, and the Rangers had reliever José Leclerc ready. Still, the manager let the 26-year-old from nearby Aledo keep going.

“I have so much confidence in him,” Bochy said. “His pitches were getting up there but his stuff was still good ... he made pitches when he had to at the end of his rope, 100 pitches, in that area. He’s just an impressive kid, he competes so well.”

Bradford had yielded two runs in the second inning on Castro’s solo homer and Farmer’s triple, which turned into a run when center fielder Leody Taveras mishandled the ball after it caromed hard and horizontally off the wall. Along with catcher Jonah Heim and pitching coach Mike Maddux, Bradford figured out a way to keep the Twins at bay the rest of his outing.

“We kind of made an adjustment after that second inning,” Bradford said. “Whether it was just pitch sequencing or whether I was tipping, not sure, but they seemed to be on a couple pitches that got hit hard to the wall. As a whole, we switched things up and were able to go six.”

With their bullpen taxed after heavy use in the previous series against the Red Sox, the Rangers needed depth out of Bradford, who said Maddux stressed that fact in the pitchers’ meeting before Thursday’s game.

“[Maddux said] as a whole group, as a collective of pitchers, we’ve got to have each other’s back right now,” Bradford said. “With the couple of long games in Boston, the bullpen was thin. So I knew my job was to try and get through as many outs as possible today. I was really grateful that they had the confidence that I could go out and finish that sixth inning.”