The baseball gods were not smiling on Andrew Heaney last night. 

He had lost two games in a row coming into last night’s start against Seattle. In his last start, against Arizona, he lasted only 4.2 innings, giving up six earned runs. 

His ERA has steadily been climbing. 

He needed a good game. Heaney struck out seven Mariners. Gave up just four hits. He left the game with two outs in the seventh after having given up a home run to Tom Murphy with a runner on due to a throwing error by Josh Jung. Instead of it being 2-0, the Rangers were now losing 4-0.

But Heaney pitched a good game. Unfortunately, he still got the L because the Rangers bats couldn’t produce a run. No matter how well you pitch, you cannot win when your team doesn’t score. Ask Yu Darvish. 

But that’s the fate of a number five starter. Not good enough to win when you could. Not fortunately enough to win when you should. 

Heaney has mostly been an uninspiring pitcher in his career. In nine seasons, he’s had just two with an ERA under 4.00. He’s had six seasons with an ERA over 5.00. His 5.25 ERA this year is about where his career ERA was. 

When the Rangers were assembling this playoff-caliber rotation, it was, frankly, a surprise they included Heaney in that. 

But he is better than most of the fifth starters the Rangers have had. Who are we kidding? He is better than most of the number-one starters the Rangers ran out there under the Jon Daniels regime.

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