Rangers can rescue rocky homestand after Ezequiel Duran walks off Royals in comeback win

ARLINGTON – Over the last two days, the Rangers have put themselves in position to rescue a homestand in which they were no-hit once and obliterated by a very bad man, thanks largely to luck.

Or at least that’s how the analytics mavens describe it.

There is another word for it, too: Contact.

On Saturday, Ezequiel Duran’s flare of a single to right field walked off Kansas City, 7-6, allowing — are you ready for this? — the offense to rescue a bullpen that struggled. Now, that’s a new twist.

But Duran’s first career walk-off hit, another momentous moment in a coming-out kind of season, followed Jake Burger’s game-tying fisted jam shot into right field and Brandon Nimmo’s infield single that deflected off the glove off Royals closer Lucas Erceg. Lotta things had to bounce right for the Rangers. Luck. Maybe. But luck only happens with contact and forcing opponents to make plays.

“I’ve said before that I put a lot of value in putting balls in play,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “There are teams that will sacrifice contact for power. I believe in contact for a lot of guys. There are some guys in our lineup that need to slug; that’s also why they’re here, but the bottom part of our lineup also needs to be able to do the little things, put the ball in play, steal bases, play some small ball and help us find different ways to help win the game and they did that today.”

To his point, the Rangers had built a 3-0 lead going to the seventh, behind another strong outing from Kumar Rocker and an offense that turned throwing errors, sac bunts, and infield hits into a two-run fourth inning. Save for Josh Jung’s first-inning homer sandwiched between strikeouts, the other six Rangers runs were scored over three innings in which they struck out only once. It ended in the fourth inning; the bottom of the order had forged that rally.

A night earlier, the Rangers had jumped out to an early lead with a dose of small ball in the first, using walks, a stolen base and throwing errors to score four times with Duran having a key two-run single.

“Someone told me a long time ago, when I was in the minor leagues, that you hit .300 by using the whole bat,” Nimmo said. “And there was another saying, something like: ‘good hitters get jammed.’ It’s because of regular contact and keeping guys on their heels a little bit. Contact and putting the ball in play puts pressure on the defense and it can really work to your advantage in some situations.”

Full disclosure: While Nimmo scalded the ball at 102.5 mph, it was not what he wanted to do. It hit in front of home plate and then bounced up. Had Erceg fielded it cleanly or let it go, it might have been a double-play. But he reached up for it, something pitchers are largely told to avoid. It deflected enough for Nimmo, sprinting at 30.5 feet per second to beat the throw to first.

Nimmo’s hit was actually the third of the inning, following a leadoff homer by Joc Pederson, his fifth homer of the week, and a Jung infield single to the hole. Bobby Witt Jr. nearly rifled him down from the outfield grass, but the throw was a bit wide.

Burger followed by fisting the ball into right on a 2-0 count to tie the game, bring the infield and outfield in, and give Duran more opportunities to win the game. Duran was able to get a fastball away and muscle it to short right at just 73 mph. Jac Caglianone couldn’t get there in time and couldn’t throw out Nimmo at home.

“I was thinking about this on deck,” Duran said. “I was not going to get too big [with his swing]. I was just going to put a good swing on it and enjoy the moment. It feels amazing. I can’t even describe it.”

Here is a try: It feels like a Gatorade shower, which he got later from his teammates.

‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’

‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com ’