CHICAGO – In the swirling sargassum that is modern-day lineup construction, the Rangers have been a veritable bay of tranquility. Among the fewest lineups in the AL. The top four spots in the lineup have been carved in stone.
Almost as if the lineup was written nightly by AI.
So, Monday, noted wild and crazy guy Bruce Bochy added the human touch of unpredictability and made a little tweak. With a pair of left-handed hitters back-to-back in the top half of the order, he thought it might be too tempting for teams to turn to lefty starters or lefty openers, as the Chicago White Sox planned to do against them. Hey, good news: There may still be hope for humanity.
No sooner had Bochy moved Rookie of the Year frontrunner Josh Jung up into the No. 3 spot, than the move paid immediate returns. In a 5-2 win over the White Sox, Jung started a first-inning rally and homered in his second at-bat. And Nathaniel Lowe, who slid out of the No. 3 spot for the first time in a game he’s started this season, started another rally out of the No. 5 spot.
“I’ve thought about it for a while,” Bochy said. “It just makes sense to break it up a little bit and put a right-hander up there. If a team starts an opener, it makes it a little more difficult for them to pick how they want to go.”
The win pushed the Rangers lead in the AL West back to five games, matching the team’s biggest lead of the season. The only difference: It’s now the Los Angeles Angels in second. Houston, which lost to the New York Mets, is 6 ½ games out.
Bochy’s planning may have been spurred by the White Sox’s decision to go with a lefty opener – Tanner Banks – on Monday. The counter: swap Jung and Lowe around No. 4 hitter Adolis García. To be honest, Bochy had also thought about simply swapping Lowe and García. It probably speaks to how much he thinks of the rookie’s hitting and plate discipline to move Jung into an even higher-profile spot. The result: The Rangers had a much more balanced lineup. They did not have consecutive lefties at any spot in the batting order Monday.
These are the things contenders must think about. Stuff like how to maximize their opportunities. In 2022, the Rangers scrambled to find enough bodies to fill out a lineup card for most of the year. It stabilized a little after Tony Beasley took over as interim manager in August, but the Rangers still used 147 batting orders in 162 games. The biggest surprise: It was only the seventh most in the AL.
This season the Rangers had used 53 lineups in their first 71 games. Only Cleveland, with 52, had used fewer. And the top four spots were in permanent ink. Marcus Semien has hit leadoff in all 72 games, Corey Seager second in the 41 he’s started (he missed a month with a hamstring injury), Lowe third in 70 of the first 71 and García fourth in the 69 he’s started. Jung had hit fifth in 64 of his 67 previous starts, batting fourth in the three games García didn’t start.
The Rangers have faced lefties in 22 starts this season, the third-highest number in the AL. It’s happened with more frequency lately. Monday was the fifth start against a lefty in the last 13 days. The Rangers haven’t struggled profoundly against lefties this season. They entered the day 13-8 against them and had a .824 OPS against lefty starters, third-best in baseball.
But why wait until trouble started to solve the issue? This was merely maintenance. Jung has owned lefties this year, entering the day with a .993 OPS against them.
In the first, it worked like a charm. After there were two outs, Jung lined a 1-1 changeup into left, then scored from first when García followed with a double. In the third, with two outs, he yanked a 1-2 curveball that broke down and in into the left-field seats.
Problem? Solved.
“I like the way this is set up,” Bochy said before the game. “I could see this happening down the road. It’s probably not going to be a one-time thing.”
Against right-handers – and the White Sox will start right-handers the next two games – it might make sense to revert to leaning to the left at the top with Lowe following Seager.
Besides, isn’t unpredictability the spark of life?
