Thoughts on a 6-1 Rangers loss

Red Sox 6, Rangers 1

• Well, at least the bullpen had a good game.
• We need to talk about Kohei Arihara. There was much talk this offseason about him being a back of the rotation starter and eating innings for Texas. The thing is, though, Arihara signed a 2 year, $6.2 million deal as a free agent — an amount that suggests most teams didn’t see him as someone who would be a quality back-end starter or eat innings. Those guys get better deals than that.
• Arihara’s work in the Japanese League suggested he might have trouble in the U.S., and now that he’s here, we are seeing this translating. Even before tonight, Arihara was giving up a ton of hard contact, despite his start against the White Sox last weekend being his only disaster start. He had a .421 xwOBA and a 7.35 xERA, and after giving up 6 runs — including four home runs — today, I have to think those numbers went up.
• Or maybe not...those numbers are really bad.
• Arihara threw all seven of his pitches again today, but when most of those pitches are 40 grade offerings, the variety loses some value. And when Arihara’s command isn’t perfect — and it wasn’t today — he’s going to get lit up.
• Arihara gave up 4 hits — all home runs — and 2 walks in 2.2 IP before giving way to Hyeon-jong Yang. He also gave up outs with exit velocities of 106.1 and 105.5. I haven’t checked out Chris Woodward’s post-game comments, but I am not sure they can run him back out there as the starter five days from now, given how bad he was.
• And if they don’t, well, maybe Yang gets a look. He needed just 51 pitches to get through 4.1 IP today, with a walk, a hit and 4 Ks. He’s also a command and control finesse guy, but maybe he’d have better luck than Arihara as a starter.
• Brett de Geus also threw 2 shutout innings, striking out 1 and allowing 1 hit, lowering his ERA to 6.75 on the year.
• The Rangers lone run of the game came in the second, courtesy of an HBP-walk-single combo. Brock Holt picked up the RBI single, in case you’re interested. I wouldn’t blame you if you’re not.
• The Ranger offense did little today, picking up 6 hits and 4 walks, so it isn’t as if Arihara’s bad outing cost them the game. I mean, it did cost them the game in the sense that he allowed more runs than the Rangers scored, but the Rangers didn’t score enough for it to matter anyway.
• Brett de Geus brought it at 95.2 mph at his peak tonight. Kohei Arihara topped out at 93.5 mph. Hyeon-jong Yang reached 91.7.
• Willie Calhoun had a 103.2 mph lineout and a 100.7 mph lineout. Joey Gallo had a 101.4 mph fly out. Bah.
• This game sucked. I’m going to sleep and have angry dreams.