ARLINGTON — Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy is aware that fans have heard this before, but the offense is in a funk after losing their fourth straight game, with a third straight to the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-2, on Sunday.

“Yeah, we’re in a funk,” Bochy said. “We just couldn’t get past one or two runs and it’s hard to win ball games like that.”

The Rangers (60-59) scored two runs in the first inning and that was it. For the next eight innings Texas was held scoreless by Phillies pitching, including starter Zack Wheeler and closer Jhoan Duran, who shut down the Rangers in the final two games of this series. Texas is now 3-6 in August.

While the Rangers have lost four straight games, the Phillies (68-49) paired a sweep of the Rangers with the New York Mets being swept by the Milwaukee Brewers and they now lead the National League East by 5.5 games.

Here are three thoughts on the game.

Texas’ offensive woes date back to Tuesday, even though Texas won that game over the New York Yankees, 2-0. The Rangers’ pitching staff managed a shutout. From there, Texas hasn’t scored more than two runs in its last five games. Dissecting why is not that hard, honestly.

The Rangers entered Sunday’s game with a slash of .237/.312/.365 with runners in scoring position. The batting average is 24th in baseball. The best team in baseball with runners in scoring position is the Los Angeles Dodgers, which is batting .286. Only three teams are batting better than .280 with runners in scoring position. The others are the Toronto Blue Jays (.284) and the Milwaukee Brewers (.284).

To the amazement of no one, those teams are leading their respective divisions. The Rangers seem to be over .500 in spite of its offense. Texas was 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position on Sunday and stranded six runners — and that was after scoring two runs in the first inning.

Joc Pederson Back Again

At this point, it’s safe to say that Joc Pederson has figured some things out since his returned from the injured list at the end of July. While the pitching matchups limited him to pinch-hitting duty aside from Sunday’s game, he’s now made it clear that whatever changes he made during his rehab stint have taken hold.

Pederson slammed his second home run this week on Sunday in the first inning. It didn’t have quite the cathartic moment as his ninth-inning, game-tying blast against the New York Yankees on Monday, but that’s kind of the point. Texas wants Pederson hitting home runs to become old hat, so to speak.

To that point, Pederson hit two home runs in a span of five days. That’s his best of the season. Given how his season has gone, that’s not a real surprise. But Texas needs a Pederson that is consistently slugging for this lineup to work.

When he returned on July 27, his season batting average dropped to .127. After Sunday it was .148. If he’s at .200 by season’s end, that means the lefty had a huge stretch run. That would be good for this season and for next. Remember — the Rangers have him under contract for another year. Both sides must make this work.

Sunday was the second straight game in which Patrick Corbin was unable to give the Rangers five complete innings. He has now walked three batters in each of his last three starts. While he’s not giving up a lot of runs — he only allowed three earned runs on Sunday, same as his outing against the Yankees — he’s not giving Texas the length he had been giving them for three months.

“There were just a couple of sliders, the one to Harper and the one that led to the homer (Edmundo Sosa), I’m a little upset with some of those,” Corbin said.

He was hoping to go deeper into the game. The Rangers’ bullpen was hoping he would go deeper into the game, though they certainly had the coverage after Jacob deGrom got them nearly seven innings Saturday night. Corbin’s value is eating innings. If he’s not able to do that consistently down the stretch, that’s a problem.