Rangers 15, A’s 8

Rangers 15, A’s 8

• Hey, the offense woke up!
• The things about pouring on a bunch of runs early on, though, is that then the team stops scoring a bunch of runs, in which case you’re like, aw, dang, they stopped scoring runs, or else the team keeps scoring a bunch of runs, in which case you’re like, hey, we don’t need all these extra runs, why don’t you save them for tomorrow, or, like, I don’t know, give some to charity.
• I will note that, if you’re going to score ten runs in the second inning, doing it with Jose Urena on the mound is pretty good timing. When Spinal Tap said, the bigger the cushion, the better the pushin’, or so I have read, the big bottom that they were singing about was probably Jose Urena’s.
• Actually, I don’t know that that’s true. I’m not even really sure how big Jose Urena’s posterior is, or if his gluteus is especially maximus.
• But what I do know is that when you have your long reliever on the mound making a spot start, you want to gluteus maximize the number of runs you score, because you never feel like you are all that far away from it being uncomfortably close, even if you’ve put up double digits and your opponents play in a poop stadium and have a payroll less than Corey Seager’s tax bill.
• Urena wasn’t a problem today, really. In fact, despite a laborious first couple of innings that led one to wonder if he’d make it into the fourth inning, Urena ended up going five full innings. He only allowed two runs, just one of them earned. So good on him.
• And hopefully we won’t need to call on Urena to start again in 2024, something that was necessitated by a combination of a regularly scheduled doubleheader being played tomorrow and a full rotation’s worth of starting pitchers being on the injured list.

• A combination of Jonathan Hernandez, Yerry Rodriguez and Cole Winn pitched the final four innings.
• Let us not speak of the Hernandez outing. Let us instead bury it at a crossroads under a full moon, and then put an iron rod and maybe some holy water over it.
• I suspect the message to Yerry was “eat (innings), drink (innings, I guess?) and be merry, for tomorrow you may fly to Round Rock so a fresh arm can be brought up for the doubleheader.”
• Cole Winn pitched an uneventful scoreless inning, and it is remarkable how unremarkable that has become all of the sudden. It’s like, oh, yeah, Cole Winn is in the game, he will throw a scoreless inning and strike someone out and we just expect that now, ho hum.
• As a baseball fan, one of the things I think we can all appreciate is a reliably boring reliever.
• The Rangers scored 15 runs on 19 hits in the game. That is, I think you will agree, a lot. It’s one of those performances where it may be simpler to wave in the general direction of the position players and say “these guys did good” rather than try to single out individual performances.
• But it is worth mentioning, I think, that Jonah Heim, Leody Taveras and Marcus Semien went a combined 11 for 14 from the 8-9-1 spots. I was going to say the 8-9-1 spots went 11 for 14 but Jonathan Ornelas and Andrew Knizner replaced Semien and Heim, respectively, and went had a hitless at bat, and that made me have to re-word.
• Or else say 11 for 16, but that doesn’t have the same verve, the same brio, the same je ne sais quoi as 11 for 14.
• Marcus Semien hit a home run to lead off the game, and then the Rangers scored 14 more runs without a homer, which is kind of funny to me.
• Corey Seager was 2 for 4 before being lifted in the bottom of the fourth with the Rangers up 15-2, which may be some sort of record for earliest “pull the veteran to get him the rest of the game off because you’re up by so much” move I’ve ever seen. Again, doubleheader tomorrow, got to keep dem legs fresh.
• Jose Urena topped out at 97.9 mph with his fastball. Jonathan Hernandez reached 98.2 mph with his sinker. Yerry Rodriguez hit 98.5 mph with his fastball. Cole Winn maxed out at 97.1 mph.
• Marcus Semien had a 107.1 mph double and a 107.0 mph home run. Leody Taveras had a 105.8 mph single. Jonah Heim had a 103.1 mph single and a 101.6 mph single. Josh Smith had a 100.7 mph double.
• Two tomorrow, then off day.