ARLINGTON, Texas — There is a case to be made that for the Rangers’ evolution this season to match the design, there are no two more important players on the roster than Dane Dunning and Taylor Hearn.
And in the growth of Dunning and Hearn, there may not be a more important week this season than this one. They will each get two starts, one apiece against last year’s World Series participants, Houston and Atlanta. It’s the kind of test Rangers manager Chris Woodward wants. For the pitchers. For everybody.
“It’s a great opportunity,” he said Monday afternoon. “I look at it just like a great challenge for our team. We shouldn’t feel like ‘Oh, crap we’re playing a good team.’ We should want it. We desire to be a winning team. We’ve got to go head-to-head with these guys.”
It is a big week for everybody, for sure. The Rangers didn’t get off to a great start and the lockout-shortened first month of the season ends with the equivalent of a World Series of a homestand: four games against AL champ Houston followed by three with World Series champion Braves.
Monday’s 6-2 come-from-behind win over Houston was a step in the right direction for everybody, especially Dunning, who saw the sixth inning for the first time this year. Maybe even for fan interest, too. With the Mavericks not playing Tuesday, perhaps the Rangers will draw more than the 17,420 who showed up to watch Monday’s game the way God intended it: With the retractable roof open, regardless of the 15 mph north winds that swirled through Globe Life Field. It was the smallest crowd to ever watch a Rangers-Astros game in Arlington.
The Rangers countered another Yordan Alvarez homer — his 10th against the Rangers — and a run-scoring, wind-blown pop fly single with some small ball. They scored once on a ground ball out and took the lead on three straight seventh-inning singles following a leadoff pinch-hit double by Willie Calhoun. One of the run-scoring singles came from Marcus Semien, who punched a ball through a drawn-in infield and eventually moved up to third on a ball in the dirt.
But this team will score some runs. Or it better since offseason investment was overwhelmingly tilted towards fixing the everyday lineup. The next step: To grow at least one more legitimate starter to pair with Jon Gray for the future, while the Jack Leiter and Cole Winn refine their talent in the minor leagues.
That’s where Dunning and Hearn, both 27, come in. They are the leading contenders to win a spot in the rotation of the future. But they aren’t guaranteed a full season of chances. There are others, like Glenn Otto, who pitches again Wednesday after an injury-related callup, and A.J. Alexy.
It’s time for the two young starters to step up and do so against elite competition.
“If they don’t pitch well enough — and it would have to be multiple bad starts — we have options, so nothing is guaranteed,” Woodward said. “There are expectations that they have to be good. We have higher expectations, we need you to go out and do your job. And we’ve supported them through it all. They’ve been great through it. They want to learn things. They’ve been really good about trying to attack. But, yeah, for us to win, those guys have to be decent. So far, it’s been just OK.
Dunning did not get into first-inning trouble and didn’t need the triple play defense to save him, which had been the hallmarks of his first three starts. Supposedly freed from significant pitch-count restraints that marked last year, he inched ever closer to actually getting to 90 pitches in a game. He threw 88, one shy of his Rangers high set last May 9.
Though he allowed a homer to Alvarez to lead off the second and ended up in a jam, he escaped it without further trouble by striking out the last two hitters in the Houston order. He was one out away from his first quality start of the season when he allowed a sixth-inning single to Yuli Gurriel. That’s when Woodward decided to pull him. His relief help, John King, got a pop up to left from Kyle Tucker, but the wind may have messed with sliding Nick Solak’s attempt at a catch. The ball hit his glove and bounced away for a run-scoring hit.
Next up: Hearn. He hasn’t seen the sixth either this season. In his three starts, he’s actually regressed in innings from four in the home opener to three in his last start at Seattle. In that game, he very nearly didn’t escape the first. It was reminiscent of his MLB debut in 2019, also in Seattle, in which he did not get through the first and injured his arm.
“I started to have flashbacks, big time,” Hearn said Monday. “After the second home run, I walked around the mound and it was circling through my head pretty good. I wasn’t going to let it happen though. I was going to get through the first. I wanted so badly to do well there. Now, I just have to go back out, bounce back and just continue to pitch to my strengths.”
The flashbacks are gone. It’s time to look ahead. It’s a big week for the Rangers. Especially for the two guys who might be the most important players on the roster.
