Rangers Bats Silenced vs Blue Jays In Home-Opening Loss
ARLINGTON, Texas — The Texas Rangers became the first professional team in North American sports to sell out their stadium since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the sports world nearly 13 months ago.
A crowd of 38,238 fans jammed into Globe Life Field, christening the new home of the Rangers they way the organization envisioned before the pandemic derailed the baseball season last year.
"It was fantastic. It felt like a real game," said Rangers manager Chris Woodward. "It felt like the old days when we had full capacity. It was a good crowd. They stayed in it the whole game. Unfortunately, we didn't give them much to cheer about."
After a stellar performance in nearly every facet of the game on Sunday, the Rangers failed to repeat any of that success in Monday's home opener against the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Toronto lineup made Mike Foltynewicz work extremely hard for outs, and hurt him with back-to-back home runs in the second inning. While Foltynewicz struck out seven hitters in his four innings of work, walks were — again — a major issue.
"You could see in the third inning, he came out and came right at them," Woodward said. "[Prior to] the Semien homer, there was a 1-1 pitch that was just down. That kind of changes the whole at-bat. ... Those are the critical pitches we talk about a lot. If we have that attack mentality, maybe he's 1-2 right there instead of 2-1, which leads to a damage pitch."
At the plate, the Rangers failed to continue a brilliant weekend where they scored 21 runs in Kansas City. Toronto starter Steven Matz mowed down the Texas lineup for 6 1/3 innings, allowing only one run on two hits. Rangers hitters struggled against Toronto pitching, specifically against Matz, striking out a total of fourteen times.
"I think Matz was really good," Woodward said. "I've gotta tip my cap a little bit. But we obviously gotta do better. We've gotta find ways to beat good pitching. When they're on, we've gotta find ways to disrupt that. Fourteen punch-outs. Like I said, that's something I'm going to constantly address."
Despite the lopsided result, there were a couple of positive takeaways. Nate Lowe registered his tenth RBI of the season, which breaks Nomar Mazara's franchise record in 2017 for most RBI in the team's first four games of a season. In addition, Brett de Geus sealed off the Toronto offense with 2 2/3 scoreless innings in relief.
"I didn't plan on using him for that third [inning], but he had so little pitches," Woodward said. "He told me he was going to go out and get his first strikeout. He did that on the first batter. He's a competitor."
The Rangers look to secure their first home win of the season on Tuesday night when they deploy their second pitching tandem of the season. Dane Dunning will start, followed by Taylor Hearn.
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Chris Halicke covers the Texas Rangers for InsideTheRangers.com. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisHalicke.
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