San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Road sorrows approaching historic levels
LOS ANGELES — The Texas Rangers will not avoid the subject. At this point, they can’t.
They have taken road woes to near historic levels. On Friday, it reached the surreal in a 12-1 loss to Los Angeles. This loss was all but assured before the first inning was over. Three of the first seven Dodgers to bat hit homers against Mike Foltynewicz. Not surprisingly, things did not get markedly better after that.
“It’s a little deflating,” Rangers manager Chris Woodward said of the first inning impact. “As the starting pitcher, that’s your responsibility to go out there and put up a zero and keep your team in the game. (Foltynewicz) knows that. He’s worked his butt off, but he knows he’s got to go out and execute better. You don’t feel good about your chances after that. Especially against a team like the Dodgers. It’s tough to recover.”
Narrator’s voice: They didn’t.
The game included a four-strikeout inning by the Rangers, a meaningless run taken off the board after the Dodgers asked for a replay up by 11 runs and the indignity of turning to infielder Charlie Culberson to pitch the eighth. At least he gave them a quick scoreless inning. Culberson also had the Rangers first hit, a double off Clayton Kershaw in the third inning.
It was the Rangers 16th consecutive road loss. They have not won on the road in five weeks. They are now within sight of the MLB record of 22 shared by two teams that each lost at least 105 games — the 1943 Philadelphia A’s (105) and the 1963 New York Mets (111). The rest of the fivegame road trip isn’t promising. They faced one Cy Young Award winner in Clayton Kershaw Friday. They are scheduled to face two others: Trevor Bauer on Saturday and Zack Greinke Tuesday in Houston. On Sunday, they face Walker Buehler, who might be in the early conversation for the 2021 award.
Perhaps the only thing standing between them and the record is that Arizona might get there first. The Diamondbacks, who are at home this weekend, have lost 19 straight on the road. Next week, they go to San Francisco, which, by the way, is where this whole losing streak thing started for the Rangers.
To this point, Woodward has not been shy about discussing the losing streak. He brought it up again with his staff on Friday. Bench coach Don Wakamatsu offered a sure-fire method for breaking it: Score one more run than the opponent.
“It works 100 percent of the time,” Wakamatsu said.
They had a laugh. Afterward: Not so much. “We’ve still got to play baseball,” Woodward said. “We’ve just got to go out and win. We can talk all we want about it, but it’s not rocket science. The more we talk about what we can’t do, the more we lose focus of what we should do. We just have to go out and execute.”
But it must be a “we.” On Friday, perhaps, Foltynewicz worried too much about being the guy to step up and shut down an opponent. It backfired badly. After a throwing error by Isiah Kiner-Falefa on Mookie Betts’ grounder, Foltynewicz allowed a homer to Max Muncy. Justin Turner followed with another.
Before the inning was over, Foltynewicz seemed to abandon his four-seam fastball, which was flat anyway, and allowed a three-run homer to Gavin Lux. In 22⁄3 innings, he allowed six balls to leave the bat at 104 mph or higher. Every strike he threw was over the heart of the zone.
“It’s just kind of an embarrassing performance,” said Foltynewicz, who took over the AL lead in homers allowed with 16. “You lose a little bit of confidence seeing the ball go over the wall like that. It’s just kind of a helpless feeling.”