Texas Rangers Begin Road Trip Seeking To Extend Odd Streak Against Red Hot Philadelphia Phillies

The Texas Rangers head to Philadelphia with a .500 record and a weird habit of making good things happen under Bruce Bochy.

Apr 21, 2024; Cumberland, Georgia, USA; Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy. / Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

ARLINGTON — When the Texas Rangers start their three-game series Tuesday at the Philadelphia Phillies they’ll be .500 — 24-24.

It’s not where the Rangers want to be after 48 games. But a myriad of injuries, along with an offensive slump, has Texas hovering at a mark they finished nine games better than a season ago.

So the Rangers head to Philly looking to get back above .500. Strangely, Texas has been good at that so far in 2024.

The Rangers have been .500 eight times this season, and each time, they won the next game.

Does it say something about the Rangers at this point? Manager Bruce Bochy isn’t sure.

“I don’t know if they know what our record is,” Bochy said on Sunday. He later admitted he didn’t know either but knew they were over .500.

The Rangers have not been under .500 since Bochy became their manager before last season.

Players tend to have tunnel vision in the regular season. It’s the control what you can control argument. Starting pitcher Michael Lorenzen echoed that after he took the loss on Sunday.

The Rangers recent trend shows they step up when the record falls to even.

Texas dropped to .500 for the first time after an 8-5 loss to Houston on April 14. They beat Detroit the next day.

A win in Atlanta on April 21 pushed them to 12-11.

The Rangers returned home for a nine-game homestand and dropped to .500 three times — twice against Seattle and once against Cincinnati — before they won eight of 11 to improve to 22-17 after a doubleheader on May 8 at Oakland.

From there, however, the Rangers were swept in a three-game series in Colorado and lost the first two games of last week’s series with Cleveland to drop to 22-22 before beating the Guardians, 4-0, in the series finale.

The Rangers dropped to 23-23 with a 9-3 loss to the Angels on Friday and followed it with a 3-2 win in 13 innings.

After Sunday’s 4-1 loss, the Rangers are back at .500. They’ve also lost seven of their last nine.

Inconsistent? Absolutely. Resilient? Looks that way so far.

“We’re not playing our best ball right now,” Bochy said. “But they’ve been resilient for over a year now and they’ve shown it this year with all they’ve been through. So we’ll go there and give it our best and that’s all we can do.”

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