ANAHEIM -- If frustration was apparent in the Rangers clubhouse on Monday night, when they lost the series opener to the Angels, it was a different emotion on Wednesday night, when they battled to an 11-8 loss at Angel Stadium.
It was not quite frustration that swept through the clubhouse, though it was surely still permeating through the players' mind. It was more accepting and somber. It was a tough loss, but they’ll keep chugging along, hoping for a bounce back the next day.
“I think we're good,” said second baseman Marcus Semien. “We just gotta keep going. There's going to be games like this, because it's hard to win big league games. I've always taken that attitude into every single night. It's not going to be easy. Teams aren't going to roll over. That's a team that's been hitting the ball out of the ballpark all year, so you really have to keep adding on. We fought tonight, but they hit a couple more homers than we did.”
The story of the Rangers season has been that of an elite pitching staff, a pieced-together bullpen holding its own and the offense struggling to muster together any bit of consistency to match the two.
Wednesday must have been opposite day.
The Rangers rotation entered the day with a 3.21 ERA, the lowest in MLB. The bullpen entered the day with an AL-best 3.27 ERA, good for the third-lowest in MLB (2.89-SF, 3.22-SD).
In a wild back and forth affair, in which a two-run homer from Marcus Semein gave the Rangers a lead in the seventh inning, things would ultimately fall apart quickly.
Rookie starter Kumar Rocker -- who had a 2.49 ERA across his last four starts -- surrendered six runs in 4 1/3 innings. The bullpen gave up five more, including a back-breaking two-run homer from Jorge Soler in the eighth inning off reliever Luke Jackson, who hasn’t been used in high leverage in weeks.
“I was running out of pitching,” manager Bruce Bochy said postgame on using Jackson. “You saw the pitchers I was using. He's an experienced guy. He's pitched late in the ballgame. We had him out there, and of course, we had [left-hander Robert] Garcia available. We had our long guys too, but things stayed tight.”
Jackson placed the blame on himself for the loss, with a middle-middle slider to a hitter like Soler not quite being the pitch he wanted to throw.
“He's a really good hitter, and I just gotta make better pitches,” Jackson said. “The guys swung it well today. I think if they keep hitting, swinging like this, the boys are having a lot of games. You can't hang your hat on one loss, but I know it was on me. I'll wear that for sure. It happens. But these bats are getting hot. That's something exciting to see.”
In a wild turn of events, the offense gave the Rangers everything they could’ve asked for on Wednesday. Most teams don’t lose when they score eight runs.
But it still wasn’t enough, especially with the bullpen reaching its breaking point after weeks of overuse due to a high frequency of extra-inning games.
Even the Rangers defense -- which leads the American League in both defensive runs saved (43) and is second in outs above average (13) -- collected two errors and another mental mistake, all of which led to Angels runs.
All of those things ultimately came back to bite them.
“If we have all three pitching, offense, defense, we're going to win,” Semien said. “We didn't have all three tonight. I think that we didn't help our guys out on defense either. If we make a couple more plays, maybe that game goes our way. It is frustrating. … I'm still confident. We want to win these games and we're not doing it. it’s just been a rough patch, and I think we're ready to move on.”