ARLINGTON — Josh Jung wants to play every day. For a guy who’s been injured for so much of his young professional career, that matters to him.
But Bruce Bochy also knows a thing or two about managing players. That’s how Jung ended up missing from the Rangers lineup the last two games before getting another start in Wednesday’s 6-3 loss to the Royals.
Jung did not play the previous two games — with a team off-day in between — after appearing in 60 straight games from April 8-June 14. It’s easy to see why, even for the guy who has held down the hot corner for Texas whenever healthy.
Jung was hitting .167 over his last 17 games to drop his season average from .288 to .253. He had 22 strikeouts over those 17 games.
He went 1-for-4 with a double in Wednesday’s loss.
So does Jung think the mental break will have helped him?
“Maybe in the long run,” Jung said. “It’s not something you want, but hopefully in a month, I’ll look back and say it was worth it. … I was just trying to make some adjustments, get my legs back underneath me, that’s all.”
Bochy tried something similar with Adolis García earlier this month, and it has seemingly paid off. The right fielder didn’t play over a three-game set against the Cardinals from May 30-June 1. At the time, he was fairly receptive to the situation. Now he has hits in 11 of his last 13 games, including a single and a double on Wednesday.
“I’d rather play,” Jung said. “I’d rather test it that day. Yeah, I guess I was able to make some adjustments and not have to worry about being ready to play at seven. But I had to be hot and ready to go regardless. I guess it helps. We’ll see.”
Jung called it a “sequencing thing” that was holding him back before his mental break. He hesitated to call it mechanical, stating that it was just an unconscious thing in his sequencing that made everything else in his swing a bit off.
“I was just late, and that made me crashy, rushing forward,” he explained. “I didn’t see the ball as well. I got away from the plate a little bit, too. Basically pitches that were two balls in looked like strikes in my head. Stuff that I was taking, that I normally don’t, felt a mile away. Just an unconscious thing I was doing.”
He worked with Bochy, as well as hitting coaches Justin Viele and Bret Boone, to figure out how to get back to what he was doing before, like earlier in the season when he was taking his walks and driving the ball to all fields.
“As much as anything, [sequencing] is about getting on-time with everything,” Bochy said. “The sequence has to be in the right order for you to be on time — getting your foot down, getting your hands where they need to be in the launch position, all those things with where you’re at in a box. He had changed that a little bit. He didn’t realize it. It’s hard to hit Major League pitching. If you’re off just a little bit, then you’re going to struggle.”
Jung said he believes they found the key to making his sequence better. He’s in a better place to be on time for every pitch and stop guessing at what’s thrown his way.
“We’ll take it out of the game and see what happens, because that’s the true test,” he said. “Again, you can do whatever you want on a machine or flips or whatever. But you gotta do it in the game.”
