The Rangers Confronted the Injuries of Scherzer and García With Urgency

Travis Jankowski
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

The Rangers’ Game 3 win proved costly and bittersweet, as both starter Max Scherzer and right fielder Adolis García departed due to injuries. General manager Chris Young and manager Bruce Bochy chose to treat the losses with the urgency befitting a team in hot pursuit of a championship, so prior to Tuesday night’s Game 4, both were replaced on the active roster, officially ending the seasons of a prospective Game 7 starter and record-setting cleanup hitter. Lefty reliever Brock Burke and utilityman Ezequiel Duran were anointed to replace them, ensuring Bochy a full complement of 26 able bodies.

The Rangers waited until an hour before gametime to announce the moves, which added an element of surprise to the situation, though had the injuries occurred during the regular season, the replacement of both players would have been a foregone conclusion. From the vantage point of the 10–0 lead the Rangers built by the third inning of Game 4 and the 11–7 victory that pushed them to within one win of a championship, the absences were felt, albeit not quite in the manner one might have expected. Burke pitched briefly and badly, and Duran remained a bystander as Travis Jankowski picked up the slack in García’s stead.

Scherzer’s season had already been an ongoing battle before Monday. He was scratched from an April 16 start due to soreness in his right side and back, missed time in May due to neck spasms, and on September 12 strained his teres major, sidelining him for the remainder of the regular season and the first two rounds of the playoffs. He returned from his five-week absence with a pair of rocky outings against the Astros, allowing seven runs in 6.2 innings. He began Game 3 by holding the Diamondbacks scoreless for three innings, a welcome turn of events, but he needed the help of his defense to do so. In the second inning, García threw Christian Walker out at the plate trying to score from second on Tommy Pham’s single, and third baseman Josh Jung made a great barehanded grab-and-throw after Alek Thomas‘ comebacker deflected off Scherzer’s right elbow.

Even with the zeroes, the fact that the 39-year-old righty generated just two swings and misses on his 36 pitches suggested that he was not at his best, and he wasn’t. In the third inning, he began feeling back spasms while throwing a slider to Evan Longoria, and while he toughed out the frame as his back tightened and received treatment between innings, he threw just two warmup pitches before departing.

Based on his previous history with back spasms, Scherzer tried to buy himself time. Pointing to his experience in being scratched from a Game 5 start in the 2019 World Series under similar circumstances, he noted to reporters that he was able to start Game 7, 72 hours later, saying, “In 48 hours, we’ll know. These things can come and they lock up, but if you treat it right, you can be ready to go in a couple days.” But when he arrived at Chase Field on Tuesday, he “was pretty locked up when he walked in,” according to Bochy. Young said the team considered waiting another day before making a move, but the pitcher’s spasms hadn’t subsided with treatment. “His back is in the same spot it was last night,” Young said. “Our medical team has extreme concern in terms of his ability to recover over the next few days that would allow him to pitch in this series.”

The Rangers thus chose to give themselves an extra arm sooner than later in the form of Burke, a 26-year-old lefty who made 53 appearances for Texas totaling 59.2 innings. He pitched solidly for the first two-thirds of the season, posting a 2.72 ERA and 4.14 FIP in 43 innings through the end of July, but surrendered five homers and 10 runs in his final 6.1 innings in September, ballooning his numbers to a 4.37 ERA, 4.90 FIP, and 2.0 homers per nine. His splits hint at some level of situational utility, with a mid-90s fastball/slider combo that plays better against lefties than righties. He held same-siders to a .291/.313/.418 line with just two homers allowed in 83 PA, compared to .261/.295/.497 with 11 homers in 167 PA against those of the opposite hand.

Left off the ALCS and World Series rosters, Burke’s lone appearance this postseason came in the Division Series against the Orioles — one that illustrated his spot in the pecking order. Entering with an 11–5 lead in the ninth inning of Game 2, he walked one, gave up a hit and got one out. Both runners scored when José Leclerc entered and served up a homer to Aaron Hicks, but the closer survived and shut the door for an 11–8 win.

As it turned out, Bochy called Burke’s number in an even lower-leverage situation on Tuesday, bringing him in to protect an 11–1 lead in the eighth inning. It did not go smoothly; he retired Ketel Marte on a 100.7-mph fly ball, then surrendered three straight singles to lefty Corbin Carroll and righties Gabriel Moreno and Walker, two of them via hard-hit balls. That was enough for Bochy to call upon Chris Stratton, who promptly served up a sacrifice fly to Pham and a three-run homer to Lourdes Gurriel Jr., which pushed Burke’s postseason ERA from 54.00 to 67.50.

Barring a blowout where the Rangers are on the short end and need a mop-and-bucket man, Burke may not get the ball again. The pitcher to keep an eye upon is Jon Gray, who pitched to a 4.12 ERA and 4.47 FIP in 157.1 innings but missed the last week of the regular season and the first two rounds of the postseason due to tightness in his lower forearm. He’s pitched well in three relief appearances since returning, allowing one run on four hits and one walk and striking out eight in 5.2 innings. He’s now lined up to start Game 7 if this series reaches that point.

As for García, he’d been a one-man wrecking crew during the Rangers run, hitting .323/.382/.726 with eight homers — five during the ALCS, for which he was named MVP — and 22 RBIs, a postseason record. But after hitting a walk-off homer in Game 1 against the Diamondbacks, the 30-year-old slugger went hitless in Games 2 and 3, and in his eighth-inning plate appearance on Monday night, he grabbed his lower back after hitting a fly ball. Jankowski replaced him in the bottom of the inning. After undergoing an MRI and being diagnosed with a moderate strain of his oblique, García received treatment at the ballpark on Tuesday and attempted to take batting practice but quickly shut it down. “It’s not something that’s going to get any better over the next five to seven days,” Young said.

The 24-year-old Duran, who was acquired from the Yankees in the Joey Gallo trade in July 2021, enjoyed a nice breakout this season, hitting .276/.324/.443 (107 wRC+) with 14 homers. His versatility made him something of a secret weapon for the Rangers, as he ably filled in at a number of positions to help the team overcome injuries. He began the season in a left field platoon with Josh Smith, but the pair soon shifted to shortstop when Corey Seager strained a hamstring in mid-April, with Duran hitting his way into getting more of the everyday work over the following five weeks. After returning to outfield/DH duty, he filled in at shortstop again in late July when Seager sprained his right thumb, then took the bulk of the third base duty when Jung fractured his left thumb in mid-August. In all, Duran played 37 games at short, 34 in left field, 22 at third, 21 at DH, nine at second, two at first, and one (two innings, actually) in right field.

A dreadful September slump (29 wRC+ in 35 PA) cost Duran playing time, took the shine off his end-of-season numbers, and led to his being left off the various postseason rosters in favor of third catcher Austin Hedges. Still, he improved markedly over 2022, when he slashed .236/.277/.365 (80 wRC+). He hit the ball in the air more often, helping to unlock his 60-grade raw power, and nearly doubled his barrel rate.

Ezequiel Duran Batted Ball Profile
Season BBE GB/FB GB% FB% EV Barrel% HH% AVG xBA SLG xSLG wOBA xwOBA
2022 154 1.53 50.6% 33.1% 85.9 4.5% 31.2% .236 .216 .365 .317 .282 .256
2023 289 1.03 39.5% 38.5% 90.1 8.7% 43.9% .276 .254 .443 .429 .330 .318

Duran’s 4.2-mph increase in average exit velocity ranked third in the majors, and his 12.8-point gain in hard-hit rate was second. It all translated into a handsome 27-point gain in wRC+. But for as interesting as his season may have been, the slump and his lack of experience in right field put him behind the lefty-swinging Jankowski and switch-hitter Robbie Grossman on the depth chart.

The 32-year-old Jankowski hit .263/.357/.332 (95 wRC+) and stole 19 bases in 287 PA for the Rangers, making a team-high 49 starts in left plus 10 in center and four in right. Defense is his calling card; combining his work at all three outfield spots, he was 5–6 runs above average in RAA, DRS, and UZR. For Game 4, Bochy started him on the strength of his glove, reasoning that with Joe Mantiply serving as opener, “They’re going to be using everybody out there [in the bullpen]. So it’s hard to pick the matchup you want on the starter in a game like tonight.”

As it turned out, Jankowski went 2-for-4, scoring twice and driving in two runs during the Rangers’ five-run rallies in the second and third innings. With two outs and a man on first in the second, he singled off Miguel Castro and scored on Marcus Semien’s two-run triple. Batting against Luis Frias with the bases loaded and two outs in the third, he lined a ball to center field, which a sliding Carroll could only deflect; Jankowski was credited with a double. That made it 7-0, and he then scored on Semien’s three-run homer.

Jankowski even got to demonstrate his defensive prowess in the seventh inning, making a sliding catch of a Geraldo Perdomo fly ball in foul territory and narrowly avoiding a collision with Semien:

The score was 10–1 at the time of the catch, and so it didn’t feel like a big deal. But as the course of the game soon reminded us, there are no insignificant outs in a World Series. Credit to Jankowski for hustling to make the play.

The Rangers sent six players to the All-Star Game this year. Five of them — Seager, García, Jung, catcher Jonah Heim, and starter Nathan Eovaldi — spent time on the injured list, but they overcome those injuries with depth and a next-man-up mentality. The losses of Scherzer and García have given them another opportunity to demonstrate that resilience, and by the look of what happened on Tuesday night, they’ve got the situation in hand.





Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jay_jaffe... and BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.

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boomstickMember since 2024
1 year ago

Rangers fans may not be overly sad about improving the defensive capabilities of the outfield when elimination games are on the table.