ARLINGTON – Well, if you gotta break a losing streak that lasted a week, knocked you out of first place and below .500 and made you bystanders at the trade deadline, you might as well do it with some style.
Will a walk-off do the trick?
On Tuesday, the Rangers ended their six-game nightmare when Ezequiel Duran’s ninth-inning line drive spun around San Francisco right fielder Jung Hoo Lee, nicknamed “The Grandson of the Wind,” in Korean, bounced into the stands and scored Jake Burger to make it 5-4.
Along the way, the Rangers blew a pair of leads in the seventh inning or later. That included Jacob Latz allowing two runs in the ninth for his first blown save since May 26.
“I’m glad we won the game,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said, sounding relieved. “I mean, a lot happened. There were a lot of moments where you could go ‘here we go again,’ being in a losing streak and finding ways to lose. That could have been the assumption in the dugout, but it wasn’t. And that was encouraging, especially after a tough loss yesterday.”
In the hours after the trade deadline, before which the Rangers only significant acquisition was reliever Chase Silseth, the club had played it’s “worst,” game of the season, according to Schumaker, in a 5-1 loss to a depleted San Francisco team.
It was the kind of loss that could have led a team teetering one way or another to tilt towards demoralization.
But the Rangers rallied, largely because Duran has once again found his swing. He had four hits in the series opener, coming up a triple shy of the cycle. His ninth-inning homer allowed the Rangers to avoid being shutout on Monday.
On Tuesday, he had the third of three straight hits in the first that helped the Rangers build a 2-0 lead. That disappeared when Silseth allowed his first homer as a Ranger to Osleivis Basabe, a former Ranger farmhand. Then Duran doubled home two more runs in the eighth to give the Rangers the lead back before Latz, pitching for the first time in a week, struggled with his command.
In the bottom of the ninth, though, Burger, pinch-hitting for Joc Pederson, doubled into the left field corner. After Wyatt Langford flied out to right, Corey Seager was walked intentionally and Brandon Nimmo struck out, Duran lined the ball to right.
Duran had struggled as much as any Ranger on the disastrous road trip to Tampa Bay and Houston, going just 2 for 17. His swings had gotten increasingly bigger. But he spoke with assistant hitting coach Alex Cintron before the San Francisco series and it seemed to get him back in a place where his hands weren’t moving too far backward in his swing. It allowed him to get back to attacking the baseball.
“I had gotten away from that, but we talked, tried to get it simple again,” Duran said. “Don’t try too much. Keep it in the middle of the field. We’ve just been working on that.”
Now the Rangers need to see if they can build on it.