Thoughts on a 7-3 Rangers loss

Tigers 7, Rangers 3

• If you ignore the top of the sixth inning, this wasn’t a bad game.
• The top of the sixth inning was very, very bad though.
• So let us set the scene. Kolby Allard, young and scrappy and full of grit, trying to prove those who wrote him off after his bad 2020 season, those who say he doesn’t have the stuff to be a starter in the major leagues, wrong, trying to establish himself as someone the Rangers can count on going forward, is making his seventh start of the season, having been relegated to garbage time bullpen duties when the year began, and having pitched well enough there to ultimately claim a rotation spot. He got into a bit of a jam in the fourth, resulting in a run scoring, but he struck out the side in the fifth, giving him a career high nine strikeouts for the game.
• Things went awry, or askew, or afoul, or perhaps all three at the start of the sixth.
• Now it is worth noting that the Rangers, to this point, had not scored any runs. The Tigers were up 1-0, and there wasn’t a sense of optimism in the AJM household at least that an offensive explosion for the Rangers was in the offing. To the contrary — there was a palpable concern that the one run the Tigers had was an insurmountable lead at that point.
• Nonetheless, hope springs eternal, defying the second law of thermodynamics, which would say that hope would have to eventually stop springing, and so we were still suffering from the misconception, when the inning started, that the Rangers could still win.
• Miguel Cabrera, who I’d forgotten was still around and active, singled to leave off the inning. After a fly out, Jeimer Candelario doubled, though Cabrera is so slow he couldn’t score and thus stayed at third. Robbie Grossman then walked, loading the bases for Nomar Mazara.
• Mazara grounded a 1-2 pitch to Nate Lowe. With a slow batter and the bases loaded, a 3-6-1 or 3 GIDP seemed possible. Lowe booted the ball, however, allowing a run to score, then compounded the error by flipped the ball to first base once he recovered it. Allard wasn’t covering the base, so the ball bounded away, and a second run scored.
• Brett Martin was then called into the game, had a run score on a Willi Castro sac bunt, then gave up a home run to someone I had never heard of named Zack Short. That made it 6-0 and that was church.
• Dennis Santana and Taylor Hearn pitched the final three innings, and one of them gave up the final run, though I have to admit I wasn’t really paying attention anymore at that point. The box score says it was Santana, so we will go with that.
• The Rangers offense recorded four hits and no walks or runs in the first eight innings. Nate Lowe then recorded a one out single in the ninth, and with two outs, Joey Gallo and Jonah Heim had back to back home runs, to get three runs in, avoid the shutout, and make the final score a little less embarrassing.
• Still, it was kind of a pitiful performance for most of the game by the offense.
• Fun fact — this is the second most runs the Rangers have scored in a Kolby Allard start this year. They were shut out the first two times he started, and scored one run in each of his last two starts prior to this one. They also scored two runs in an Allard start, and twelve runs in another start. Texas is now 1-6 in Allard starts. I will let you guess which game the “1” came from.
• Allard hit 93.1 mph on his fastball tonight. Taylor Hearn hit 97.3, Dennis Santana reached 96.5, and Brett Martin’s fastest pitch was 94.2 mph.
• Nate Lowe had a pair of 101.4 mph exit velocities, one a single and one a groundout. David Dahl had a 105.5 mph single. Joey Gallo had a 105.0 mph home run and a 104.4 mph groundout. Jonah Heim’s home run was the third hardest ball he hit all day, at 97.1 mph — he also had a 98.7 mph groundout and a barreled 104.4 mph lineout.
• Bah.