Little Things Add Up To Big Trouble As Rangers Finish April With 4-2 Loss To Oakland

• D-tails – Boxscore: A’s 4, Rangers 2; Standings; Guardado pops top; The Depot live game blog; Post-Game Show comment thread

ARLINGTON – They are the most clichéd – and in the modern stats-analysis happy era, ridiculed – aspect of the game.

Little things. What are “little things,” anyway?

But the purists tell you little things, or old school baseball fundamentals, if you will, are what separate winners from losers. And now the Rangers should be able to understand that very well because it was the little things, or the lack thereof, that kept them not only from winning a game on Thursday, but also made the difference between them being a winning team in April and a losing one.

In a 4-2 loss to Oakland Thursday afternoon that finished April off with a 10-11 record, the game turned on a whole bunch of little things.

In consecutive innings while the game was still scoreless the Rangers failed to drive a runner in scoring position home with less than two outs. In the game-changing seventh, starter Vicente Padilla turned the ignition on an Oakland rally by getting a late break to first base on a ground ball. Third baseman Michael Young, still new to the position, didn’t attempt to get a third-to-home double play on a grounder to him at the base with no outs and the bases loaded. In the ninth, down by three runs, Young tried to stretch a sure double into a triple even though his run had no bearing on the outcome and was caught for the inning’s second out.

Tiny little fundamentals. One big loss.

“Sometimes, we’re pretty consistent,” manager Ron Washington said about his team’s execution of fundamentals. “Sometimes we try to do a little too much. But I’d rather have them out there pushing and have to rein them back in than the other way around.”

Asked about Young’s ninth inning base running blunder, a very uncharacteristic mistake for a player considered a very smart baserunner, Washington demurred to assess any direct blame.

Young, however, wasted no time in accepting the blame after his double clanged off the left field wall and rolled past Matt Holliday. Holliday rushed to scoop it up, threw to third and got the call on a close play.

“It’s a bad play,” Young said. “I thought I could make it, but when we’re down by three runs, I can’t make something a bang-bang play. If I’m going to go, I better be able to be in there standing up.”

In hindsight, the mistake looked even worse since Andruw Jones followed with a homer, though it’s not likely Jones would have been pitched the same way with one out and a runner on third as he was with two outs and nobody on.

For Young, it wasn’t even the most disappointing moment in the game. That came in the fifth inning when he came to the plate with runners on second and third and nobody out in a scoreless game. With the infield back, conceding a run on a ground out, Young popped up to second on an 0-and-1 pitch.

“The fifth inning is what I’m most unhappy about,” Young said. “We’ve got a chance to do some damage there. My at-bat was just a wasted at-bat. No runners moved anywhere. It was unproductive.”

Young wasn’t alone. In the fourth, with runners at first and second and one out, Chris Davis struck out. And after Young, Hank Blalock duplicated his pop-up to second base. Blalock’s pop up came with the bases loaded and one out since Oakland walked Andruw Jones to get to him. Nelson Cruz finished off the inning with a strikeout.

The wasted chances and the poor execution put the Rangers in a hole in the seventh. After RHP Vicente Padilla, who was battling low fastball velocity for the third time in his last four starts, allowed a leadoff single to No. 9 hitter Eric Patterson (a career .196 hitter), Ryan Sweeney followed with a grounder to the whole between first and second. Davis fielded it nicely, but Padilla was late getting to the base. Another single loaded the bases and then Eddie Guardado, called on to get one lefty out, walked Jack Cust on four pitches. Guardado was ejected after arguing balls and strikes with home plate umpire Angel Campos and tossed his cap and glove into the stands on the way to the dugout.

The inning became more complicated when Young fielded Matt Holliday’s grounder and fired home to get a force out at the plate. But, he might have been able to step on third and throw home to get a tag play double play. That might have negated another run, which scored on Kurt Suzuki’s sacrifice fly.

All that little stuff nearly became moot anyway. The Rangers put two men on with two outs in the eighth for Ian Kinsler, who launched a ball to straight-away center. Sweeney went to the wall and above it to take away a three-run homer.

But you know what they say: Live by the homer; die by the little things.