KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- We've arrived at the finger-pointing stage of the season.
Blame the offense.
At the very least, it's a convenient way to wrap up whatever is left of the Rangers' season and move on to something equally silly, like, oh, the Cowboys, for example. Also, it's pretty accurate. Virtually every issue the Rangers have encountered in what may go down as the most underachieving season in team history falls back on the offense. Or, rather, the lack thereof.
Take Tuesday night's 5-2 loss to Kansas City, the Rangers' fourth in five games of a crucial seven-game road trip. There was plenty to ponder, like whether or not starter Merrill Kelly should have pitched the seventh (spoiler: he couldn't, due to hamstring cramps), using Cole Winn for two extremely high-leverage innings and even whether or not the Rangers should have tried to bunt with rookie Cody Freeman at the plate and slow-footed Jonah Heim at first base. The bottom line is that's all secondary.
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When you get four hits and score two runs -- and when that offensive output is the norm rather than the aberration -- it places extra stress and attention on every other aspect of the game, from game management to pitch selection. But the root cause is simple: Everybody feels they have to do their job perfectly because the offense leaves no room for any other mistakes.
"I don't know if I'd call it stress," is how Rangers manager Bruce Bochy started to answer, but by the end he was acknowledging that:
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"It's tough when you can't have a little bigger margin of error. It's tough when you continue to sit on two or three runs."
Which is exactly where the Rangers' offense has sat all month, while the AL standings go zooming past them. Tuesday's loss was their 13th loss in 18 games since the July 31 trade deadline. The Rangers have scored three or fewer runs in 11 of those games. They've won one. For the year, the failed offense has managed three or fewer runs in 65 of 127 games, giving them the fifth most games with three or fewer. The Rangers are on pace to score three or fewer in 83 games, more than half the season. It's a lot of numbers to digest, sure. But it all says the same thing: The offense doesn't do its job.
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And because this is no longer a trend, but the norm, it forces every other facet of the game to function with perfection.
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So the fact that Kelly allowed only two hits, both solo homers, through six innings wasn't enough. Kelly, who has dealt with hamstring cramps throughout his career, notified the Rangers he was starting to feel small cramps after the fifth. He gave the Rangers another inning to allow the bullpen time to get ready.
The offense responded by going in order in the top of the seventh of a tie game.
It wasn't enough that Cole Winn got a strikeout and a double-play after entering with the bases loaded and no outs in the seventh. His first pitch had gotten away from him, hit Jonathan India and forced in the go-ahead run. The Rangers responded by getting the leadoff hitter on for the first time in the game in the eighth. Bochy elected to have right-handed Cody Freeman enter the game to hit for lefty Josh Smith against the lefty Angel Zerpa. Freeman is expected to be able to do things like bunt as part of his game, but with Heim at first, the bunt was an even-lower percentage play. Bochy didn't have a pinch runner for Heim at first because he'd already used both Josh Jung and Ezequiel Duran against Zerpa in the seventh. They did not get the ball out of the infield.
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In the bottom of the eighth, Winn ended up in a bad matchup against Bobby Witt Jr., whom the pitcher says he's never retired in the majors or minors. We'll take his word on the minors. After Witt hit a two-run homer to ice the game in the eighth, he's 3-for-3 in the majors.
"We all have an understanding of the situation," Winn said. "There's a little feeling of it being more important."
Winn was talking about the Rangers' declining position in the playoff race. We think. But it certainly could apply to the other situation: Having to cover up for a failed offense.
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