ARLINGTON, Texas — Time and time again during the 2026 season, the Texas Rangers‘ bullpen has picked the team up and kept them afloat through the first 58 games of the season.
On Saturday afternoon, the Rangers offense needed to pick up their bullpen after Tyler Alexander, Chris Martin, and Jakob Junis combined to allow six runs in the seventh and eighth innings.
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In the ninth inning, the Rangers struck for three runs to walk-off the Kansas City Royals 7-6 and, indeed, pick up their bullpen at Globe Life Field.
Joc Pederson got things going for the Rangers in the ninth by blasting a solo home run to pull Texas back within a run.
After back-to-back singles from Josh Jung and Brandon Nimmo, it was first baseman Jake Burger who ripped a game-tying base hit.
The very next batter was Ezequiel Duran, who flipped a walk-off single into right field to give the Rangers the win and mark the first career walk-off plate appearance of his career.
“We’re fighting every single at-bat and every single pitch,” Duran said after the game. “We’re making an adjustment every single time to help the team win and playing hard.”
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“We knew we had a chance with the top,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said after the game.
“Joc is on an absolute heater, five home runs in five games, as soon as he did that, the momentum was back on our side, even through we were still down, we felt good about it…” Schumaker continued.
“It was incredible, the guys used the whole field and didn’t try to be a hero even though there was two heroes which was probably the best part for me,” Schumaker continued. “They used the whole field and didn’t just try to slug their way to a win.”
Despite not being in the mix of the game’s wild ending, Rangers starter Kumar Rocker had one of the most important efforts of the afternoon, throwing six scoreless innings while allowing just three hits.
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Rocker’s outing marked his third scoreless performance in his last four games. It lowered his ERA to 1.52 over that stretch.
With Saturday afternoon being his 14th start at Globe Life Field in his career, Rocker set a Rangers record for the lowest ERA by a Rangers pitcher through his first 14 starts at home at 2.71.
“Rock did incredible, six innings and it felt like he fought his way back into counts, it wasn’t like he was ahead all the time,” Schumaker said. “Six innings with scoreless baseball against a really good offense, I felt like he did his job…”
With the win, the Rangers now have a chance to finish the homestand with a winning record despite losing three out of the first four games and Schumaker knows how big of an opportunity that is.
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“You have to be at least over .500 at home right? At the very minimum, you gotta win at home, after a tough start losing three out of four, to potentially have a winning record at home would be gigantic…” Schumaker said.
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source sports.yahoo.com ’
