Texas Rangers pitcher Jacob Latz delivers during the ninth inning of a baseball game against the San Diego Padres at Globe Life Field on Friday, June 19, 2026, in Arlington.
Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News
ARLINGTON — The Rangers have welded together an unexpectedly lethal back-end in their bullpen with two starters-turned-relievers who were hardly shoe-ins for their current high-leverage roles three months ago.
If right-handed setup artist Jakob Junis and left-handed closer Jacob Latz both pitch — and, by pitch, we mean that the pair can consume three stressful innings on their own in any given game — the Rangers are set up exceptionally well.
If one is unavailable, or on a workload governor in the midst of their longest stretch of consecutive games this season, the situation becomes delicate.
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The Rangers lost 6-4 in extra innings to the San Diego Padres at Globe Life Field on Saturday afternoon when three relief pitchers allowed five runs, three of which were earned, with their two highest-leverage arms limited by their standards. The trio of right-handed pitcher Cole Winn, left-handed pitcher Tyler Alexander and right-handed pitcher Joe Ross combined to allow four hits, two walks and the go-ahead home run in the 10th inning to secure a sixth loss in their last eight games and a drop back down to four games under .500.
“Junis was down today and Latz was going to be good for one inning,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said. “We needed somebody that was going to get some big outs.”
The duo of left-handed pitcher MacKenzie Gore (six innings of one-run ball) and right-handed pitcher Peyton Gray (who threw a scoreless seventh) did. But in the eighth inning, with a 3-1 lead, the Rangers turned to Winn with Junis unavailable after he threw 31 pitches the night before. Winn allowed a leadoff double to Padres second baseman Fernando Tatis Jr., a bunt single to left fielder Samad Taylor that the Rangers were unable to field properly and a groundout to third baseman Manny Machado that cut the lead to one run.
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After Winn forced shortstop Xander Bogaerts to ground out, the Rangers turned to Alexander, but the local lefty left a sweeper in the zone that center fielder Jackson Merrill hit into right field to score Taylor and tie the game.
“Winn was going to get to the top of the order, we had that kind of scripted out and planned out, and if there was any trouble, we were going to go to Alexander,” Schumaker, who reiterated that he liked the Alexander-Merrill matchup, said. “Unfortunately, again, he just kind of backed up a slider and it just got through a hole.”
Latz pitched a perfect ninth but, because he logged his fifth multiple-inning save in Friday’s win, was unavailable in extra innings. The Rangers turned to Ross, whom they signed to a minor league contract earlier this month and promoted to the major league roster last weekend, for the 10th inning. He walked Taylor on five pitches and allowed a three-run home run to Machado before an out was recorded.
The offense, meanwhile, was held scoreless by the All-Star duo of left-handed pitcher Adrian Morejon and right-handed pitcher Mason Miller in the game’s final two frames. The two flamethrowers threw a combined 20 pitches harder than 99 mph and allowed two hits in three innings.
It’s a reminder that a deep bullpen pays dividends. The Rangers have an undefeated 13-0 record in games that both Junis and Latz pitch, but they cannot run either into the ground, especially not in a stretch of 15 games in 15 days with more than half of the regular season left to play. Latz logged multiple innings in four of his five appearances before Sunday’s game. Junis did the same in two of his last three.
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The depth of the club’s bullpen is tested without them, because while the unit’s 3.52 ERA is the seventh-best in baseball this season, it drops to a league-average 3.96 ERA with Junis and Latz removed from the equation.
Their relief staff thinned early this season when their two expected highest-leverage arms — left-handed pitcher Robert Garcia and right-handed pitcher Chris Martin — underperformed before they landed on the injured list. It created a runway that allowed Junis (an expected bridge arm) and Latz (an expected rotation swing man or multiple-inning reliever) to step into and flourish in critical roles.
The Rangers will need more than just the two of them, though, to navigate a busy run of games.
“Latz can’t got multiple inning saves every day, or back-to-back days, that’s not fair to him,” Schumaker said. “Guys are going to continue to get opportunities in bigger spots.”