ARLINGTON -- Entering Thursday night’s matchup with the Red Sox, the Rangers were 72-1 when leading in the eighth inning or later, good for the best record in baseball.
That’s thanks in part to closer Jacob Latz, who has been dominant since earning the role. He notched his 30th save in Tuesday’s series opener against the Red Sox and leads baseball in both four-plus-out saves (13) and six-plus-out saves (seven).
He entered the day with a 2.00 ERA, good for eighth in the American League among pitchers with 50 or more innings, while converting his last nine save opportunities dating back to Aug. 7.
Latz is as automatic as they come. But on Thursday, with the Rangers right on the precipice of their first sweep since June 25-28 in Toronto, he stumbled.
Entering the game in the eighth with a pair of runners on base after Jakob Junis walked the leadoff batter and hit Willson Contreras, Latz got a quick out before surrendering a go-ahead, three-run homer to Trevor Story, his first home run since May 13.
The Rangers, who did not have a runner in scoring position after the second inning, failed to rally, ultimately falling, 4-3, to the Red Sox.
With the loss, the club dropped one game back of the Astros in the AL West and remains two games back of the final AL Wild Card spot.
“I take my chances with Jacob Latz any day of the week,” said Rangers manager Skip Schumaker. “I'll take Jacob Latz in leverage all day long. We went down with him and I'll take my shot with him any day of the week.”
Despite Latz being tagged with the loss, what looms large is that three of the Red Sox’s four runs reached base via walk or hit-by-pitch.
The Rangers jumped ahead early on Boston starter Sonny Gray, scoring all three runs in the first two innings. They then went just 2-for-21 (.095) from the third inning on, never putting another runner into scoring position.
Meanwhile, the Red Sox continued to put pressure on the Rangers’ quasi-bullpen game. They broke the dam when rookie Robby Ahlstrom walked the first two batters he faced in the seventh inning. The lead runner advanced on a fly out to deep center field and scored on a groundout.
The veteran Junis relieved him and limited the damage before getting into his own pickle the following frame. Junis walked the leadoff batter in the eighth and then hit Contreras on the hand, leaving a pair of inherited runners for Latz, who was limited to just one inning.
Schumaker added that Robert Garcia, who is scoreless in 4 1/3 innings since his return from the injured list, was unavailable.
“I think early on with Robby walking those couple guys, we had to use Junis to get out of it,” Schumaker explained. “We had to ask him to go back out there just because of where we were at in our kind of bullpen day type of deal. We were hoping that Robby could get the bottom of the order, and a couple walks hurt us. It forced us to use Junis, and then send him back out. Then we had to use Latz to clean them up. But I think you're right. The walks ended up hurting us.”
Winning a series was good. A sweep would’ve been much better.
Nobody needs to tell the players in the clubhouse that. They’re well aware.
“I thought it was a really good series,” Schumaker said. “We would have loved to have gotten that last win, obviously, especially this time of year. Every win, every loss, counts in a different way right now. … But you move on to the next one. That's the only thing you can do. Every loss hurts right now, but we have a job to do and it’s to try to win however we can tomorrow. We had a chance to win tonight. We went down with our leverage guys. Now we do whatever we can to try to win tomorrow.”
The Blue Jays come to Arlington for three this weekend, tied with the Rangers for fourth place in the AL Wild Card standings.
“I’ll regroup, we'll all regroup, and we got another series to win,” Latz said. “We've gotta keep stacking series wins and wins in general. We've got nine games. We're still right there. We know what we need to do.”