1-1 - Rangers forget to bring bats to new park, fall 3-2 to Rockies

It took the Rangers 13 ²⁄₃ innings into the 2020 season to collect their first single on the year. The honor went to Ronald Guzman, who wasn’t even supposed to play today. That kind of sums things up for the lineup thus far in the young season. Two games, three runs.

Texas had chances, too. They went 2-for-10 with RISP and left 12 on base. The killers were the bases loaded, one-out opportunity in the seventh followed by a golden runners-on-second-and-third-with-no-outs chance in the bottom of the eighth but they did not score in either inning.

Honestly, while neither team has hit very well, if there’s been a major difference between these two teams so far in this series it has been the defense of the Rockies.

In a messy top of the fourth that ultimately doomed Texas, a muffed double play attempt by Rougned Odor and a botched throw to home by Mike Minor were scored errors leading to two Colorado runs. The Rangers never scored enough to overcome that inning along with a seventh inning insurance run by the Rockies.

Meanwhile, the Rockies made several good plays in the field in last night’s debut and followed that up with a few sterling efforts with the glove today, including the outright robbery of Shin-Soo Choo on his bid to be the first to homer at The Shed when Garrett Hampson pulled one back from beyond the left field fence in the Rangers’ first at-bat of the day.

So far the Rangers are entirely on script with solid pitching, offensive offense, and suspect defense, but if you’d have told me they were going to score three total runs in their first two games, I’d have taken a 1-1 record.

No one has hit the first home run at The Shed yet. I can’t imagine there were many instances at The Ballpark where neither team went deep in consecutive contests but these are different times and this is a new era.

Player of the Game: Jeff Mathis hit a triple and drew a walk and is probably the team’s best hitter.

Up Next: The Rangers will go for the rubber match win tomorrow with Corey Kluber on the mound making his Texas debut against LHP Kyle Freeland for Colorado. First pitch in the finale from The Shed is scheduled for 1:35 pm CT.