What's up with the Rangers' defense? Continuing trend helps cost Texas series vs. Detroit

Texas Rangers right fielder Evan Carter dives but can't catch a Detroit Tigers' Jake Rogers fly ball during the seventh inning of a baseball game Sunday, May 3, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) (Paul Sancya/AP) DETROIT — How can a team that fielded a franchise-best defense one season ago play error-free baseball, continue a stretch of remarkable highlight reel-caliber plays and still have a costly mess left over to show for it? The Rangers might not be able to explain it, but in Sunday's 7-1 loss to the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park, they proved those sequences of events to be more than just an abstract riddle.

The defeat — which clinched a series loss and a drop to two games under . 500 — was marred by a bevy of defensive miscues that either directly or indirectly contributed to more than half of Detroit's runs. It mirrored a trend in which the once rock-steady Rangers defense has regressed to barely average in under a year.

"We weren't real fundamentally sound like we're typically used to," Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said. "We had some really good plays. The outfield had some really good plays, there were some plays in the infield that were really good as well, but there were some plays that we're used to making that we didn't.

" It started in the sixth inning, while the Rangers trailed by a manageable two runs, when center fielder Evan Carter laid out to catch a shallow liner from Tigers catcher Jake Rogers. Carter whiffed, the ball rolled a ways, Rogers cruised into third base with a stand-up triple and scored one at-bat later when shortstop Kevin McGonigle singled off of right-hander Jack Leiter. Carter, the American League's statistically best center fielder this season who made a fantastic catch on a long run in Saturday's loss, has earned himself the benefit of the doubt .