Rangers’ freefall continues as another bullpen implosion leads to seventh straight loss

MINNEAPOLIS — The course of a Major League Baseball season will always expose a team’s most deeply hidden flaws. And the Rangers’ flaw — a mostly unproven bunch — was widely visible from the time the club got to spring training.

So here we are. It is the last week of August, the last quarter of the season, and no matter how many attempts the Rangers have made to solve it, the bullpen remains a puzzle without a solution. No matter how deeply Will Smith stares into his locker searching for one.

That was all Smith could do after a 7-5 loss to Minnesota on Thursday in which he got a huge double play on his first pitch of the night and a game-changing two-run homer to pinch hitter Ryan Jeffers on his second. It sunk the Rangers to their seventh straight loss. They cling to first in the AL West by a game over Houston and Seattle.

Smith wore it, but he was hardly the only problem. Josh Sborz, called on to start the eighth, allowed consecutive hits to tie the game. While Smith stared into his locker postgame at one end of the clubhouse, Sborz did the same at the other end.

It was the Rangers’ 23rd blown save in 47 attempts this year. If you aren’t doing the math at home, it’s a 51.1% conversion rate. It ranks 27th of 30 teams in the majors. The only teams worse are all at least 25 games under .500. The Rangers also have the fourth-worst bullpen ERA in the majors (4.68). Oh, and as long as we’re burying the bullpen here: The Rangers have now lost 15 games in which they’ve led after seven innings. On Thursday, they led 1-0 after one batter on a Marcus Semien homer, 4-1 after three innings and 5-4 after seven.

It’s a perplexing situation for a manager who made his bones as a bullpen whisperer. Perplexing may be too kind a word.

“Obviously, we’ve got to get things sorted out there,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “It’s a big part of the game. It’s where a lot of games are determined. And right now we have a couple of guys that are not quite getting it done.”

For much of the season, Smith had been part of the solution, not the problem. He stepped into the closer’s role in April when José Leclerc and Jonathan Hernández failed. Bochy trusts Smith, who pitched for him in San Francisco. He’s got the mentality of a closer.

But not the stuff. His fastball is below average, but he lives more on his secondary stuff. Thursday’s implosion demonstrated how risky that is. Both pitches were sliders. Both were located in almost the same spot. Left-handed hitting Max Kepler reached out and rolled over it for a double-play grounder. To right-handed pinch hitter Ryan Jeffers, though, it was in a perfect spot for him to turn on it. There is no margin for error for Smith, and his best asset to one set of hitters is a liability to others.

In a past managerial life that was no issue for Bochy, who mixed and matched right- and left-handed pitchers to finish games in San Diego (where he also had a pretty good closer) and San Francisco. But since he left the Giants after 2019, MLB changed its rules on him, adding a three-batter minimum for relievers. It means less ability to maneuver through the late innings. It is the one rule change over the course of his time away that has bothered Bochy.

On Thursday, that meant sticking with Sborz for the first three batters of the eighth, even after he’d allowed a single and double. He then walked Royce Lewis to load the bases. That allowed Bochy to set up the lefty-lefty matchup, which worked out fine. But not when Smith had to face a right-hander.

“Sborz struggled, and that’s really where the trouble started,” Bochy said. “He couldn’t get an out. So, you know when somebody has an off night and you have to go with somebody else, it’s not always a perfect setup. You know they are going to pinch hit and you just have to hope he makes his pitches. It’s just a tough situation for anybody to be in.”

The Rangers have been in a tough situation in the bullpen all year. Smith’s awful August has raised the issue again. Though Bochy didn’t commit to a closer this week, he indicated after Smith lost a game at Arizona on Monday that, yeah, maybe Aroldis Chapman would get more save chances. But Chapman also had a blow save in Monday’s extra-inning loss and ended up throwing 37 pitches in that game, so he needed some downtime, too.

Chapman was one of the team’s midseason fixes for the bullpen, acquired in a trade with Kansas City. The Rangers also added middle innings reliever Chris Stratton at the deadline and moved Martín Pérez to the bullpen. But the trade deadline has passed. It’s going to be more difficult to find reinforcements.

Perhaps that was where there was a small sliver of hope for the Rangers on Thursday. Nathan Eovaldi could be on the verge of returning from the IL, which might bump Andrew Heaney from the rotation to the bullpen. There is some thought Heaney, who has failed to make it through five innings eight times this year — including each of his last three outings — could be more effective when asked to go a bit shorter.

“It’s really just disappointing,” Heaney said. “It’s been tough. It just kind of feels like we are not quite clicking. And that’s a little frustrating. But it’s part of the game. All you can do is just play the game and then come the next day. Nobody here is questioning anybody’s effort or preparedness or anything like that. We’re just in a rut. We’ve got to keep going. There is no alternative.”

At least not one that anyone wants to consider.

Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant

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