‘The puzzle is messy’: Rangers starting to piece together offense after early struggles

ARLINGTON — On the surface, it is a great mystery.

Even after an early-week run-scoring splurge, the Rangers remain among MLB’s worst-producing offensive teams. How is that possible after they invested more than $500 million on hitters in the offseason and overhauled the coaching staff by hiring not one but two successful hitting coaches? These are supposed to be the solutions, not raise more questions.

Go beneath the surface a bit and perhaps a different question arises. Like how could this not have happened?

So many changes. So many new faces. So little time together in spring training to learn trust in language, teammates, systems.

“I knew it was going to be a process,” manager Chris Woodward said before Wednesday’s 6-5 10-inning walkoff win over the Los Angeles Angels that completed a three-game sweep. “It’s just going to be different for some guys. There is a transition.”

Nathaniel Lowe, who had a huge pinch hit in Tuesday’s come-from-behind win, delivering the walkoff homer with no outs in the 10th.

Evidence of a successful transition is becoming more apparent. Though the Rangers began Wednesday ranked in the bottom tier of MLB in OPS (.637, 26th), batting average (.219, 27th) and expected batting average (.244, 24th), they have won four straight and have the league’s fourth-best record in May.

Woodward then embarked on another long, impassioned explanation about his philosophy, but to oversimplify, it goes something like this:

The Rangers are going to identify “lanes” in which their hitters are most successful. The hitters are then going to narrow down their strike zones to only attack pitches in those zones. When they recognize pitches are heading for that zone, they’ve got to be aggressive and start their swings perhaps a bit earlier than usual in order to catch the ball out in front to drive it in the air. It requires lots of trust on multiple levels. Trust is earned, not given.

You can’t simply overwhelm players with instruction and information on how they are going to change their games. Demand change and you are often met with resistance. For offensive coordinator/bench coach Donnie Ecker and hitting instructor Tim Hyers, it’s been a “methodical and tactical” approach, as one staffer put it. They’ve explained their philosophy and offered to work with players on their terms.

When it works best is when players seek them out, which may explain the recent surges of Adolis García and Jonah Heim. García, in particular, spent so much time worrying about “not chasing” and striking out, that he became passive at the plate.

“Anytime you align your goals around not doing something, it becomes a paralyzing state to the world class athlete,” Ecker said. “Our conversation was really simple. It was ‘Go be you. We don’t care if you strike out. Go try to hit balls as far as you can.’  A lot of unsolved physiology is psychology and a lot of unsolved psychology is physiology. So just by changing Adolis’ psychology his movement patterns are completely different.

“The puzzle is messy,” Ecker said. “But taking boundaries off a Ferrari is important. He does not need to drive his Ferrari with the autobrake on.”

In short, it’s about trying to get players to make the thought process automatic and organic rather than an agonizing and mechanical procedure.

Said Lowe, this team’s Yogi Berra: “It’s crazy what happens when you don’t think about it. The game is going to do what the game is going to do. People think always trying more is more. Sometimes less is actually more.”

Others struggled with trying to adhere to the game plan rather than simply execute their own plan. As Kole Calhoun said after Tuesday’s game, players talked about getting their heads too deep into the game-planning element and struggling to simply focus on the at-bat. Calhoun is a great example of what can happen when the balance is struck. He homered and doubled on Tuesday. He has four homers in his last four games and went 12 for 27 (.444) during the Rangers’ 6-3 homestand.

Rangers relievers had a similar issue in the first 10 days of the season, but coaches canned an advance meeting before the early-season series at Seattle to instead tell pitchers to be simply be more aggressive and believe in themselves. The results since — an ERA of 2.53 in the 25 games heading into Wednesday — spoke for themselves. The bullpen, however, is full of young, inexperienced arms; it needed somebody to say it to them.

The hitters, on the other hand, have more experience. With guys like Calhoun and Brad Miller, whose seventh-inning homer Wednesday gave the Rangers the lead, they handled that element themselves.

The results for the offense have been encouraging, but it is far from a finished product. Most notably: Intended leading man Marcus Semien remains well below .200 and homerless. He has certainly been aggressive at the plate, but it’s not produced results. For example, he entered Wednesday hitting just .154 on fastballs over the heart of the zone. A year ago: He hit .455 on those same pitches.

The contact and launch angle suggest that while Semien is swinging at those pitches, he may not yet be fully trusting himself to attack and the slightest hesitation puts him behind the ball.

“I think he’s trying to he’s trying to buy into it,” Woodward said. “He signed here for a reason. He knew what we’re about. He believes in it. He’s had really good conversations. And he’s trying to find his way right now. There’ll be a game where everything clicks, where he will get back to being Marcus Semien.”

The full-scale ignition of the offense awaits.

King Trout: For a while now, it’s seemed like nobody hit more homers against the Rangers than Mike Trout. That is no longer just a metaphor, but rather fact.

Trout caught a lazy 0-2 slider from Dane Dunning in the fourth inning Wednesday and hit a 114 mph laser beam into the left field stands for his 43rd career homer against the Rangers. It tied Reggie Jackson for the most homers hit against the franchise since it moved to Texas in 1972. Counting homers he hit against the franchise when it was still the Washington Senators, Jackson actually had 54.

A quick breakdown on some Trout vs. the Rangers homer numbers: He’s hit 22 in Anaheim, 21 in Arlington; he’s hit 27 with the bases empty and two with the bases full; he’s hit 33 against right-handers and 10 vs. lefties. The most common inning for a Trout homer against Texas: The first, in which he’s hit 10.  His most frequent victims: Colby Lewis and Yu Darvish, against whom he hit four apiece.

What was unique about the record-tying homer: It was his first on an 0-2 pitch. It was the first time he’d homered against the Rangers when down 0-2.

Briefly: The Rangers hosted 50 San Diego-based servicemen and women and their guests on Wednesday as part of a new initiative. The military members and their guests took in the game on Wednesday night and were scheduled to tour the George W. Bush Presidential Library on Thursday. … Eli White’s time from home to home in Tuesday’s eighth inning was calculated at 14.8 seconds, making it the fastest in the majors this season. White singled and then rounded the bases after Brendan Marsh allowed his single to go through his legs. … At Triple-A Round Rock, Mitch Garver went 1 for 3 with a walk in his second rehab game.

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