'We're better than this': Rangers bitten by costly errors

PHILADELPHIA -- Three Rangers converged in shallow center field as a ball off the bat of Alec Bohm dropped between them in the bottom of the sixth inning on Wednesday night. As the ball fell, Bohm quickly took second base as Corey Seager and Marcus Semien watched Leody Taveras field the ball.

Two runs scored on the play.

It had a .340 expected batting average, according to Statcast, and wasn’t an error on any of the three fielders -- and definitely wasn’t the worst defensive play of the night -- but it felt like an illustration of what the entire night was like for the Rangers in their 11-4 loss to the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park.

The Rangers committed four official errors, all leading to more runs after extended innings: a good throw from Seager bouncing right out of the glove of first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, a spiked pickoff attempt from Dane Dunning, a miscommunication between Seager and Semien on a grounder up the middle and a grounder between the legs of Seager.

“When you have a game like this, man, you really gotta flush it because it was ugly,” said manager Bruce Bochy. “There's no getting around it. We didn't handle the ball well and it came back to hurt us. … We’re better than this.”

The last time the Rangers had four or more errors in a game was on April 8, 2023, against the Cubs (five errors). The franchise-worst mark is seven. This is the fifth time this year a team had four or more errors (five by A's on April 1 vs. Boston is the season high)

“Focus, focus, focus,” Bochy said. “You have to bear down on every pitch. We made a couple of errors. I can't tell you how good they are, but that's going to happen. I'm not gonna get down on a couple of mistakes there because that's going to happen in our game.

“We’re just not handling balls well as we have in the past year and in the early part of the season. It's hit us everywhere. I look at this defense that was one of the best defenses last year and I think when it's all said and done, we're gonna get back to who we are. …We just outdid them with the mistakes tonight.”

The defensive misplays didn’t help starting pitcher Dane Dunning, who made his first start since May 4 after sustaining a rotator cuff injury, nor did it help a bullpen that is already ranked 30th in MLB.

Of the 11 runs Philly scored, only five were earned.

“I mean, I made a big boneheaded mistake there in the second,” Dunning said of his own errant throw on a pickoff attempt. “I just threw it right in the dirt. It's just something simple like that. If I just make a normal throw -- it’s not a hard throw at all -- maybe we're out of that inning with only one run scored and that's a completely different ballgame from there. I didn’t really set the tone.”

Bochy did make sure to point out that the Rangers made mistakes in all aspects of the game in the loss.

Entering the day, the Rangers had scored four runs or fewer in 10 straight games (in which they went 2-8), the longest span by an AL team in 2024 and the longest for Texas since 2021. The last span that was longer than that for the club happened in 1988 (15 games). During that 2-8 span, the Rangers hit .153 with runners in scoring position with just two extra-base hits and 10 RBIs.

In Wednesday’s loss, they scored four runs, while going 2-for-9 with runners in scoring position.

“We swung the bats better, but we just have to do three or four good things in a row to put runs on the board,” Bochy said. “It’s just stopping. We’re getting guys on base and we’re just not getting that big hit. Tonight [Josh Smith] got a big hit and put us on the board and the Taveras [home run], we got off to a good start, up 2-0 and then things just unraveled.”

This marks the fourth consecutive series loss for the Rangers, moving them to 8-12 in the month of May.

Even after getting Dunning back, the Rangers still have 12 players on the injured list -- including an entire rotation and a pair of middle of the order bats in Josh Jung and Wyatt Langford. But it’s long past time to use that as an excuse. For the entirety of May, Texas just hasn’t been playing good baseball. That goes much further than a plethora of injuries.

“What am I seeing? I’m seeing the same thing you're seeing,” Bochy said. “We’re not scoring. And then we have games like this where we don't pitch well. … The only thing I know is to work harder. Just try to keep pushing here, that says all you can do and just remind them that we’re really good and we're really resilient. It's gonna be up to us.”