{"id":12589,"date":"2025-07-22T05:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T05:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/12589\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T05:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T05:09:08","slug":"rangers-freeman-helman-get-big-league-1sts-on-back-to-back-pitches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/12589\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers’ Freeman, Helman get big league 1sts on back-to-back pitches"},"content":{"rendered":"

ARLINGTON, Texas — Cody Freeman<\/a> and Michael Helman<\/a> had big league firsts on consecutive pitches for the Texas Rangers<\/a> after Josh Jung<\/a> homered in his first at-bat back in the majors.<\/p>\n

Freeman lined a tiebreaking RBI double into the right-center gap for his first big league hit in the fifth inning of the Rangers’ 7-2 win<\/a> over the Athletics<\/a> on Monday night. On the very next pitch from rookie left-hander Jacob Lopez<\/a>, with the crowd still buzzing, leadoff hitter Helman’s first career homer was a three-run shot.<\/p>\n

“That was cool that Cody got his first hit and an RBI right before that, and then that happened. That was pretty special,” Helman said.<\/p>\n

“It’s just one of those moments where, just I hit the ball and I didn’t know what happened from contact to second base,” Freeman said.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n

2 Related<\/p>\n

The first career RBI by Freeman made it 2-1, and Helman then drove in his first runs. It was the first time in nearly five years that a player had his first MLB hit in the same inning a teammate had his first career homer, since Philadelphia<\/a>‘s Mickey Moniak<\/a> got his hit and Rafael Marchan<\/a> immediately followed with his first career homer on Sept. 18, 2020, according to Elias.<\/p>\n

“Those guys won that game for us,” manager Bruce Bochy said.<\/p>\n

About the same time as those back-to-back firsts, the Rangers announced that they had come to terms with California high school shortstop Gavin Fien, their first-round pick in the Major League Baseball amateur draft eight nights earlier.<\/p>\n

Batting eighth after being recalled earlier in the day from Triple-A Round Rock along with Helman, Jung homered leading off the third for a 1-0 lead. He also walked before scoring on Helman’s homer, then singled and scored again in the seventh.<\/p>\n

“It’s a crazy day,” Jung said. “To just get some results like that it’s great. It helps build confidence.”<\/p>\n

Jung and Helman were still with the Round Rock team in Las Vegas on Monday morning when they were told they were re-joining the Rangers. After a delayed flight, baggage claim and what Jung termed “a little police escort” in rush-hour traffic, they got to the ballpark about a half-hour before first pitch and both went deep.<\/p>\n

“I think it showed that BP is overrated because Hellman and Josh Young got here about 6:30 and didn’t take batting practice or anything. Just put on a uniform,” Bochy said. “It’s old-school way, like playing American Legion ball. Just go out there and play.”<\/p>\n

Helman added a fourth RBI with a safety squeeze bunt in the seventh inning, becoming the first Texas player to have a homer and an RBI sacrifice bunt in a game since Bob Brower on July 11, 1987.<\/p>\n

Micheal Helman and Cody Freeman celebrate after Helman’s first big league homer, a three-run shot, which came in the fifth inning one pitch after Freeman collected his first MLB hit.\u00a0Raymond Carlin III\/Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Freeman, a fourth-round pick by the Rangers in 2019, made his MLB debut as a pinch-runner Friday night, when he scored first on Corey Seager<\/a>‘s two-run double in the eighth inning of a 2-0 win over Detroit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After going 0-for-3 in his first big league start Sunday night, when he played third base and his first two at-bats were against American League All-Star starting pitcher Tarik Skubal<\/a>, Freeman batted ninth as the designated hitter. His first big league hit came off a fellow rookie.<\/p>\n

“I was way more relaxed than yesterday,” Freeman said. “You know, I was definitely amped up, heart rate was pounding. That was the benefit of ESPN Sunday night facing the best pitcher in the game. Just can’t get higher than that, and then it felt way more relaxed today.”<\/p>\n

Freeman raised his arms as soon as Helman connected on the next pitch, then trotted home in front of him.<\/p>\n

“That was probably one of the only ones I knew (was gone). But I knew I did the job, I knew if it didn’t get out and at least it’d be a sac fly,” said Helman, who made his big league debut in nine games for Minnesota<\/a> last season and is with his third organization this year. “I was just trying to do my job, and because the guys before me did theirs, I felt like I needed to get something in the air. And it happened to work out better than I expected.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, Texas — Cody Freeman and Michael Helman had big league firsts on consecutive pitches for the Texas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-12589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}