MINNEAPOLIS — When a team pulverizes the baseball, as the Texas Rangers did in their double-digit run outburst Tuesday, the margins of error and fortune are widened by force.
When a team doesn’t, as the Rangers didn’t in Wednesday’s 6-2 loss to the Minnesota Twins at Target Field, the leeway for unlucky plays becomes slim to none.
“That is a frustrating part of baseball,” Rangers starter Jack Leiter said. “It’s a game of inches sometimes.”
Leiter, who allowed four runs in four innings, was a victim of such happenstance. He surrendered a 479-foot three-run home run to Minnesota center fielder Byron Buxton on a slider that was off the plate and hardly in anyone’s sweet spot in the bottom of the third inning. Buxton, a half-inning before that, laid out to rob Marcus Semien of a would-have-been double with runners on base. The play carried a 55% catch probability and limited the Rangers to a single run that inning.
Inches.
It only got worse from there.
The busted balk: Rangers center fielder Evan Carter reached base on a full-count walk with one out in the top of the fourth inning and took a lead. Twins right-hander David Festa spun to first base and caught Carter in a rundown for the inning’s second out.
Both Carter and Rangers manager Bruce Bochy were adamant postgame that Festa balked on the pickoff attempt.
“I think it’s a big call,” Bochy said. “You have one out, he’s going to run, and he balked. Left side, they both missed it, that’s a bad break. They just didn’t pick it up. They thought he did it all in one move but he didn’t, you could see him take a turn there. So, yeah, bad break for us.”
The Rangers trailed 3-2 at the time of the play. Carter would have been on second base with third baseman Josh Jung — whose .919 OPS with runners in scoring position leads the team — up to bat behind him had he not been thrown out.
“I had a good jump and I was going to be standing on second with [Jung] up to hit,” Carter said. “It could’ve tied the game right there. Instead it’s two outs with nobody on base. In the moment, at that point in the game, that’s a big time play that goes their way.”
Was this a balk? The Rangers sure think so😬 #AllForTX https://t.co/CC0SQ40hHK
— SportsDay Rangers (@dmn_rangers) June 12, 2025
The unfortunate dribbler: In the bottom of the fifth inning, after Leiter had been replaced by left-hander Jacob Latz, a well-placed ground ball extended the inning and led to two additional Minnesota runs.
Buxton doubled to lead off the inning and chase Texas’ starter from the game. Rangers first baseman Josh Smith threw Buxton out at home plate on a Matt Wallner fielder’s choice to preserve for the inning’s second out to preserve the one-run lead, but in the next at bat, Ty snuck a 80 mph single past Smith into right field. Smith, in his ninth game as a first baseman, was holding Wallner on at first base and couldn’t get to the groundball.
“He’s holding the runner on,” Bochy said. “He was in the right place. [] hit the ball over there, he does hit that hole, he just put it in the right place.”
It led to ...
The backbreaking triple: Twins right fielder Willi Castro drilled a hard-hit line drive into deep center field in the next at bat after ’s single. Carter, a speedy 22-year-old, sprinted backward in an attempt to catch it. The ball missed Carter’s outstretched glove by mere feet, rolled to the wall and allowed Wallner and to score to give the Twins a 5-3 lead. Castro scored on a Carlos Correa double in the next at bat to make it 6-3.
“It’s easy to beat yourself up over that,” Carter said. “If I get a better jump of that much more, maybe I get to it. Maybe I play it back and keep it a double instead. It’s easy to play the blame game after the fact. I was just trying to make a play. I thought I could get to it and ended up not. It’s tough. Stuff just goes the other way sometimes.”
It certainly did Wednesday.
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