Through one series, the offense had scored more runs per game than any other team in baseball. It posted the highest batting average in its league, the second-highest OPS, and was striking out less than the league average. The pitching staff was near the top of the league in fewest walks issued and fewest homers allowed. The bullpen had a 1.42 ERA. The defense had not committed an error. The team hadn’t made many mistakes.
Or lost a game.
That team was not the Philadelphia Phillies, who were defending their NL pennant and featured an MVP-level superstar offseason addition. It was their hosts, the Texas Rangers.
There’s no bulletin board material in the previous 100 words. Nothing to clip and save. Three games in, the Rangers were fewer than 100 feet into a mile. Less than one week into a calendar year. Not even two cents on the dollar. But maybe there are two cents worth chewing on as we contemplate whether 2023 has a real chance to be, I don’t know, a year ahead of schedule.
For a team to win in any sport, especially one without title expectations, some unexpected things have to fall right. Health matters, for instance. The 2011 Rangers got 157 starts from their season-opening rotation of C.J. Wilson, Colby Lewis, Matt Harrison, Derek Holland, and Alexi Ogando. If they’d needed more than Dave Bush’s three starts that year (or the pair from Scott Feldman, who missed the first two-thirds of the season), or had to turn to Brett Tomko or Michael Kirkman or Derek Hankins for another handful, do they get back to the World Series?
The Rangers won their first six games that season. It’s the last time they’d won as many to start a season as this year’s sweep of the Phillies, whose visit was the reason for the unaccustomed national telecasts the Rangers got in the two games following Opening Day.
The fast start hasn’t been a simple function of overhauling the rotation. Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi gave up a combined eight runs in 8.2 innings in their Texas debuts. Meanwhile, while Adolis Garcia jumped out to a solid start—including an eye-opening string of quality at-bats lengthened by pitches he allowed to pass outside the zone—the most explosive outfield production came from Robbie Grossman (1.343 OPS in the opening series). Which trailed an equally unexpected hitting storm from the Jonah Heim-Mitch Garver catching duo, who posted a collective 1.417 OPS on the days they were behind the plate against Philadelphia. Last year It took Marcus Semien 10 games to collect more total bases than he racked up in his first 14 plate appearances against the Phillies. Nathaniel Lowe and Josh Jung will always be considered bat-first players, but both have shown signs of improvement on defense. Will Smith, who arrived only a month ago, nailed down the Rangers’ first save of the season.
After Texas dismissed Philadelphia, Jon Gray and Andrew Heaney were tasked with the first two games as the Orioles came to town. Gray picked up where he left off last June and July prior to the oblique strain that derailed the second half of his season, allowing two runs in 6.1 innings while striking out seven—arguably better than the deGrom, Eovaldi, and Martin Perez starts against the Phillies even though Gray’s came in a 2-0 loss. Heaney didn’t fare nearly as well on Tuesday, which marked the first time this season that both the starting pitcher and the offense had a subpar night. There have been plenty of seasons when this version of Gray and this edition of Heaney would have fronted the rotation; now Heaney is just being counted on to be the fifth starter. Cody Bradford had a brilliant start in his Triple-A debut on Saturday—and there’s absolutely no reason to dwell on it right now.
There have also been a whole lot of seasons around here (and, yeah, World Series games) when the team’s best defenders finished tight games on the bench. It would be unfair to suggest that Bruce Bochy’s insertion of Travis Jankowski for defense on Sunday night won the 2-1 game, but if Garcia hadn’t slid from center to right field in the eighth inning—the eighth, mind you, not the ninth—Alec Bohm’s one-out rope to the right-field corner would have handily beaten Grossman to the wall and resulted in two bases, if not three. Whether Bohm would have come around to tie the game, it would have guaranteed that Trea Turner (if not Kyle Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto after him) hit in the ninth. Instead, Turner watched the game end while on deck.
If a less experienced manager had pulled the right strings in his defensive alignment and bullpen management in the early going, it might have prompted a “well, this is intriguing” story line. With Bochy, it simply reinforces the comfort level Rangers fans are allowed to settle into, not sweating whether the offense is leaving runs on the bases or the defense is forcing four-out innings because of coaching decisions.
The Rangers are less than a week away from what could be a losing record. It’s absurdly early and, for the most part, meaningless that the team won at this rate to open the schedule. But if this is a wild card season, these early wins could end up being the reason it won’t fall just short. And if another 85 wins or so are yet to come, it will be because of expected developments like deGrom performing like the best pitcher alive and Corey Seager’s surface production matching what was under the hood last season.
But it will also be because at least some of these unexpected early developments blossom into season-long surprises on par with Hunter Pence in 2019 and Neal Cotts in 2013. Maybe that’s Grossman doing what Kole Calhoun couldn’t last year, and Brad Miller doing in 2023 what Brad Miller didn’t in 2022. Maybe it’s deGrom, Eovaldi, Perez, Gray, and Heaney each winning between 13 and 16 games like Wilson, Lewis, Harrison, Holland, and Ogando did in 2011—and staying just as healthy. Maybe it’s Garver staying healthy, and Heim staying fresh, and together giving the club an .800 OPS from a defensive position. Maybe it’s Lowe and Jung playing defense at a more consistent level than expected, or Leody Taveras returning and contributing league-average hitting while playing center field and running the bases at plus levels.
Maybe it’s Cole Ragans giving Bochy a second left-handed, multi-inning weapon every night between himself and Brock Burke. Maybe it’s Ezequiel Duran prompting columns late in the summer reminiscing about when there was actually a question as to whether he should make the team. Maybe it’s Owen White being pressed into service and leaving little question that there’s a rotation spot with his name on it going into 2024, or Evan Carter doing what Michael Harris did for the Braves a year ago and giving Texas little choice but to get him up here before midseason, then going on a Rookie-of-the-Year-caliber run.
All of the above is not necessary for 2023 to be a playoff season. The Rangers won’t even need most of that. But with more sure things in place than there have been in years, a few unforeseen career years or breakouts could turn the year before into the year of.
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