ARLINGTON — The Rangers had been lucky to ride with the same five members of their rotation since Opening Day.
Outside of Jacob Latz’s spot-start in place of Jacob deGrom for the second game of the season and a bit of tweaking to the rotation for Nathan Eovaldi just last week, the Rangers have been remarkably healthy in the rotation.
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Now they find themselves in a bit of a pickle with Jack Leiter landing on the injured list with a right ankle injury that ultimately required surgery.
“You never want to lose anybody in the rotation,” manager Skip Schumaker said on Monday. “Jack was doing the best he could with the injury that he had. … But it does make it challenging. It does leave an opportunity for somebody to step up.
“There might be some young guys getting opportunities here soon, we’ll see what it looks like. There’s definitely a hole in the rotation when you lose any of these guys. But we’re not the only organization that’s lost a starter. This is going to test us, but hopefully we have a guy that steps up.”
The Rangers fell, 6-4, to the Marlins on Tuesday in what would have been Leiter’s turn in the rotation. In his place, veteran Cal Quantrill ( 2 IP, 1 ER), rookie Jose Corniell (3 1/3 IP, 5 ER) and Joe Ross (2 2/3 IP, 0 ER) combined to cover the entire game with a taxed bullpen.
“We needed to get innings, bulk innings, out of somebody,” Schumaker said postgame. “We were kind of tight down in the bullpen, as far as available arms. We had those three guys available for length, and then potentially a couple guys, if we tied or got the lead. Somebody needed to get those. I thought Corniell did a pretty good job. I think he got behind too many times and they ended up doing damage.”
It was only Corniell’s second MLB appearance, having debuted on the final day of the 2025 season. He had a delayed start to this season due to back and triceps soreness.
Corniell allowed 18 earned runs over 26 2/3 innings (6.08 ERA) in seven appearances (six starts) at Triple-A Round Rock after returning from his injury.
“There’s work to do,” Schumacher said. “He’s not a finished product by any means. I think his velo is still going to creep up over the course of the year. I think his changeup is going to get better, I think his cutter is going to get better. I think he has enough to get guys out at the big league level. It’s part of our job to help him make those adjustments, and he’s going to have to, because the big league hitters hit mistake pitches often. But he has enough stuff to get guys out.”
General manager Ross Fenstermaker said that while the front office is always evaluating ways to add reinforcements, they do feel confident in the group of pitchers they have here at this time.
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