Costly mistakes secure Rangers’ fifth-straight non-winning season in loss vs. Red Sox

BOSTON – Every time it looks like the Rangers are settling on the damp, dark ocean floor of this incredibly bad season, the hull creaks ominously and somehow another thread is found.

On an uncomfortably long weekend in Boston, the Rangers got caught in the end of a hurricane and officially secured their fifth consecutive non-victorious season (as if that hadn’t been decided long ago). And now you may have a COVID-19 outbreak in hand.

The Rangers lost 8-4 to Boston on Monday in 11 innings of a make-up game for Sunday’s shift before Tropical Storm Henri. The Rangers had a weird baserunning mistake that ruined a scoring chance and then rallied in the ninth to level before Travis Shaw shot a walkoff grand slam against Dennis Santana. That moan you just heard? The bow again.

It was their 81st loss of the season, which means they’ll set a Texan record for consecutive non-winning seasons this year. They had never had more than four in a row.

But, hey, results, they don’t matter anymore. The Rangers have more immediate problems: What started with one ranger on the COVID list on Friday had turned four when the lineups were announced on Monday morning. Between that point and the start of the game, the Rangers had to drag out another player for “health and safety precautions”.

For the record, Charlie Culberson, the first ranger to experience COVID-like symptoms, felt better Monday morning, but he is on the COVID IL and will stay in Boston while the Rangers travel on to Cleveland. In quarantine and on the IL he is accompanied by infielder Brock Holt and pitchers Mike Foltynewicz and Drew Anderson. Culberson, Holt, and Anderson all agreed to publicly announce that they were vaccinated.

The situation is still fluid with catcher Jonah Heim, who was in the original starting XI but was scraped over health and safety logs less than 30 minutes before the first pitch. He was replaced by Jose Trevino.

“It was only a matter of time to be honest,” said manager Chris Woodward. “We tried everything we could. I felt like we did a really good job so far. Of course, given the circumstances we faced last year and this year, we knew the virus was a problem. Fortunately, we didn’t have many cases for us. But we’re in Texas, where it’s pretty common. “

The Rangers aren’t the first team to experience a COVID-related outbreak this season as the virus rises again. The Yankees and Washington Nationals had the most notable breakouts, causing postponements for both teams. The Rangers are on their way to a three-game series in Cleveland starting Tuesday. If the outbreak gets wider, some games could be in jeopardy.

“We are trying to manage the situation as proactively as possible,” said General Manager Chris Young. “But we assume that this is the delta variant and that it is strong. Even though we have vaccinated players and some who have not been vaccinated, we still want to protect everyone. We’ll be ready to make additional roster shifts if necessary to get a team together for our games in Cleveland and come home this weekend. “

Despite calling back Nick Solak to replace Culberson, Wes Benjamin for Anderson and Curtis Terry for Holt, they still only had 24 players available on Monday and were tight on the bench and bullpen. The bottlenecks were noticeable in both places.

Had they been deeper in the bullpen, they might not have asked Santana to hit two innings. If they had a decent midfielder, Woodward might have replaced Yonny Hernandez after his third egregious mistake in the last five games.

It also doesn’t leave the Rangers with any of their regular third basemen. Culberson and Holt combined 103 of the club’s first 123 games in that position. Hernandez started there on Monday.

He made his third major mistake in the last five days when he pushed the Rangers out of a rally. Hernandez, who was out in an extra inning loss to Seattle on Thursday and played too hard in a squeeze play on Friday, found a way to combine those two mistakes with his Bunt in the fifth inning on Monday.

Hernandez was given a second chance in the safety squeeze play that he failed on Friday, and returned steadily to the hill where pitcher Nate Eovaldi pitched it and run-down Nick Solak, who had been third. Meanwhile, Hernandez did not stop on first base, although the runner on second, Jose Trevino, had not left second base. It gave third baseman Rafael Devers time to run across the infield, run Hernandez into a run down, and hit left fielder Kyle Schwarber, who had come into play second. Schwarber marked Hernandez to end the inning.

Woodward stared at the field from the dugout. He might have taken action. But his roster just didn’t allow it.

“It’s just a little bit startling to me,” said Woodward. “We just explained it to him. That’s the part that is a little frustrating. That is a mental mistake that cannot happen on this level. “

The bow creaked again.

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