A day after Texas fired Chris Woodward and elevated Tony Beasley to interim manager, the Rangers fell to the Oakland Athletics 5-1 on Tuesday night at Globe Life Field to snap a three-game winning streak.
The Rangers (52-64) never found a rhythm in Beasley’s second game on the job. It also became clear that the execution issues in the field that helped lead to Woodward’s dismissal won’t be easy for Beasley to clean up. Leody Taveras, in particular, made two key mistakes that potentially cost the Rangers runs.
The Athletics (42-75) gave starter JP Sears (4-0) more than enough run support and took Rangers pitching for two home runs, including a two-run shot by former Rangers star Elvis Andrus in the seventh which put the game out of reach.
Kohei Arihara (0-1) made his first start of 2022 for the Rangers. Signed by the Rangers in late 2020 for $6.2 million out of Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan, he debuted as a starter last April. But in May he had a posterior circumflex humeral artery aneurysm in his right shoulder, which required surgery.
He went 3-6 with a 4.88 ERA with Triple-A Round Rock in 2022 before his call-up.
He gave up a run in each of his first three innings of work, the most notable a solo home run by Sean Murphy, which gave the Athletics a 3-0 lead. After that, Arihara found a groove and retired the side in order in the fourth and fifth innings.
He left with two out and a runner on third in the top of the sixth down 3-0. He gave up eight hits and three walks but struck out six. Taylor Hearn relieved him and retired the final out of the sixth.
The Rangers had trouble generating offense on Sears. Texas nearly scored in the fourth, as Nathaniel Lowe singled and Jonah Heim followed with a two-out double to left field. Athletics left fielder Tony Kemp ran down the ball and threw the ball home so that Murphy could tag out Lowe. Replay appeared to show that there was a chance Lowe beat the tag, but the Rangers ran out of time to have the play reviewed.
Lowe extended his streak of consecutive games reaching base to 22 and had three hits.
In the fifth, execution got the better of the Rangers. They loaded the bases with one out for Marcus Semien, who popped out in foul territory in right field to Seth Brown. He alertly threw the ball into the infield where Taveras, at third base, proved to be indecisive about whether to tag up and try to score. Instead, he was caught in a run-down and the inning ended with a double play. Earlier, Taveras was caught stealing second after he made the break on a pickoff play to first base.
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