It’s not often that an MLB manager calls a regular-season game on May 4th a “big game,” but Rangers manager Bruce Bochy did.

With a loss today, Texas would have finished its seven-game homestand with a 1-6 record before a tough road trip to Boston and Detroit.

Said 1-6 mark would have been the fewest wins on a home stand of 7 or more games since July of 2015.

However, the Rangers were able to avoid that as they used a six-run 3rd inning to put up an 8-spot and secure an 8-1 victory.

“I really thought this was a critical game,” Bochy said. “[If] you come in here and win one game on a home stand and get swept, this was a big game, I thought, for them”.

Trailing 1-0, the Rangers stepped to the plate in the 3rd inning and had one of, if not their best, offensive innings of the season.

With the bases loaded and one out, it felt like a must-score scenario for Texas as Corey Seager came up to bat.

Seager smoked a ball into right field to score a pair in what ended up as the decisive swing of the afternoon.

After that, it was Marcus Semien, Adolis Garcia, and Josh Jung who each contributed RBI singles.

“They kept it moving,” Bochy said. “They weren’t trying to do too much slug or anything, just the base hits. That’s winning baseball [to] battle with two strikes, all those things, it’s what we’ve been missing. We’ve had those opportunities and games where we’ve had chances we just couldn’t cash in, today we cashed in”.

The inning marked the Rangers second-highest total in a single frame this season (8 R 6th inning on Tue vs ATH). Texas had five hits with runners in scoring position, its most hits with RISP in a single inning since 8/3/24 vs BOS.

Jacob deGrom took the mound and put forth yet another strong start, earning his second win in as many outings, going five innings and allowing just one run.

“It feels good, the goal is to win,” deGrom said. “That’s the main goal is for the team to win and whatever way we can do it, we just gotta find ways to keep on doing it”.

After deGrom’s strong start, the Rangers tacked on two more runs in the 8th, highlighted by a Josh Smith RBI triple.
Smith’s shot down the right field line was his career high 4th hit of the afternoon, becoming the first Ranger with four hits in a game this season.

“He had a great year last year, got the silver slugger, he’s a good hitter,” Bochy said. “I’m surprised he hasn’t done this before because he uses the whole field, [and] has power. He had good at-bats all day, and so he’s so important for the ball club.

Now, just like Tuesday night, the question for the Rangers offense is can they take this one game and turn it into a run.

“I guess just like we talked about with the 15 run game, we want this to get contagious, get guys to get their confidence going and mojo going, and the grit that they had the at bats with. It’s a very good lineup, I keep saying it, I really believe things are gonna get better but we gotta do this every day and find a way to get timely hits and get guys on base”.