ARLINGTON — Luke Jackson would like a mulligan. His manager wouldn’t.
Let’s unpack that.
The first meltdown of the reimagined and reconstructed Texas Rangers bullpen is worth a dive.
Here are the ugly details: Jackson, a February signee who didn’t allow a run all spring training and carved out a high-leverage role, gave up a go-ahead, three-run home run to right fielder Wilyer Abreu in the ninth inning of the Rangers’ 5-2 opening day loss to the Boston Red Sox Thursday at Globe Life Field. The 33-year-old struck out Triston Casas, walked Trevor Story on nine pitches, allowed a Kristian Campbell single and hung a slider to Abreu that he slammed into the home bullpen.
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“Nine perfect innings in spring training,” Jackson lamented postgame. “Then your one bad one comes on opening day when you don’t make any pitches. Today, I wish I could have a couple of those back.”
And manager Bruce Bochy? Consider him an optimist. If the Rangers’ starting pitcher can craft a quality start and turn the ball over to the team’s three high-leverage arms, well …
“I think we’re going to win most of those games,” he said.
Most. Not all.
Process, this early in the season, might be more significant than the payoff.
“When you look at this bullpen,” Bochy said, “this is kind of how we had it mapped out.”
Not the result, of course, but the path that led to it. Right-handed pitcher Nathan Eovaldi allowed two runs in six innings and gave way to the Rangers’ rebuilt bullpen in a tied seventh inning. Left-hander Robert Garcia, whom the Rangers acquired from the Washington Nationals in exchange for first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, got the first relief dibs. He turned the ball over to veteran right-hander Chris Martin, who bridged the seventh and eighth innings, before Jackson entered in a tied ninth.
They put the same alignment on tape three days earlier against the Kansas City Royals in the team’s penultimate exhibition of the spring. It just went a lot better when things didn’t matter: Garcia, Martin and Jackson pitched scoreless seventh, eighth and ninth innings in relief of starter Tyler Mahle.
Bochy again stressed fluidity and that this was how he mapped out the bullpen today. He’s been reluctant to assign roles or name a full-time closer all spring. Jackson and his 19 career saves has pitched the ninth inning in the Rangers’ last two games. Martin and his 14 career saves was the highest-profile bullpen signing this winter. They like the makeup Garcia brings to high-leverage situations.
The individual instances and the course of the season may determine how Bochy and Co. configure the back end. The nature of an individual’s performance will too. The Rangers have seen both ends: In 2023, they rotated through three closers as the bullpen nearly kept them from the playoffs. In 2024, they gave the job to Kirby Yates midway through April and he delivered a sterling All-Star season with David Robertson as a reliable setup man.
Yates is a Los Angeles Dodger now. Robertson is a free agent. Only long-relief man Gerson Garabito (who threw 26 1/3 innings last season) and young right-hander Marc Church (who pitched in just one game) are holdovers from last year’s bullpen. That’s left the Rangers to work with the trio of Garcia, Martin and Jackson.
In some shape or form.
“Whenever they want to use us, we’re all available,” said Jackson, in his second stint with the Rangers. “We’ve all kind of worked on multiple innings and back to backs, however it lines up for them.”
Said Martin: “You’ve just got to be ready for that inning.”
He was Thursday. The Arlington native replaced Garcia with runners at first and second and two outs in the top of the seventh. Martin, 38, struck his former Boston teammate Connor Wong out on five pitches and got him to swing-and-miss at a splitter below the zone for strike three. Garcia got two outs in the seventh before he walked Campbell and Abreu back-to-back.
“We’re going to be put in the best situations to compete, and we know that,” Garcia said. “The bullpen here, we want to win. From that point we’re good with whatever.
“We just want to pick each other up and keep it rolling. Whatever our role is, it is.”
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