Washington Lays Into Team After Latest Loss

After dropping their 12th game in their past 15, their fourth straight in shutout fashion (for the second straight night), Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington had seen enough.

And on a getaway day, when the Rangers were set to return to DFW, Washington kept his team a little later than planned following the 6-0 loss to Cleveland holding a closed-door meeting before the clubhouse was opened to the media or before Washington addressed the media.

The results? Well, they were about what you'd expect from a skipper who has seen his team flounder thanks to a lifeless offense, sloppy base-running and uncharacteristic defensive play over the past couple of weeks, seeing their record fall from 16 games over .500 to seven over and the deficit in the AL West reaching six games.

“If you’re playing bad, you’re playing bad,” Washington said after his team was swept by Cleveland for the first time since 1980. “It’s that simple. This is a tough game and everybody struggles, but you’ve got to be tough every day. Today was a different animal. It looked like we were sleepwalking out there.”

The Rangers got just two hits in the game and saw their scoreless-inning stretch hit 21 innings, and David Murphy said he believes the talk will get the club back on track. But the team is running out of time with Los Angeles coming to town before a one-game makeup with Arizona and a trip to first-place Oakland.

“Win or lose, we should bring the same energy and effort to the field every day,” left fielder David Murphy told the Associated Press. “We’ve been kind of up and down on that this year. After the meeting, I think everyone is on the same page now and we can get back on track.”

The loss marked the fourth straight, and third straight to Cleveland, which included a high-scoring, extra-inning affair on Friday, a 1-0 loss on Saturday and then Sunday's debacle.

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“There is a difference between getting beat and losing. The first two games here, we got beat,” Washington said. “I don’t get frustrated, but I am a little upset. And the upset is more today than it was yesterday or Friday or Thursday or Wednesday or Monday or Tuesday. I need to get my guys going back down the yellow brick road.”

Not sure what that means, exactly, but the Rangers can get back on the right path starting Monday against the Angels. If not, things are going to get really ugly, really quickly.

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