Holland and rest of Rangers unraveled together

SAN FRANCISCO – An hour before Game 2, going on four hours before he’d walk three batters on 13 eighth-inning pitches that doomed the Texas Rangers, Derek Holland(notes) plucked a fresh baseball from the BP bucket and launched it toward the upper deck of AT&T Park.

He’d picked out what looked like a nice couple in the front row of the top deck, nodded his head for the international sign for “incoming,” and let ‘er fly with the easiest, most fluid flick you’d ever see.

Over the field-level seats, peaking somewhere over the second level, then falling like an oak leaf, the baseball cleared the last rail and dropped straight into their laps.

The couple waved in gratitude. The only souvenir they could have expected was windburn. An adolescent in a 24-year-old left-hander’s body, Holland grinned and waved back.

“Impressive, huh?” he said on his way down the dugout steps, laughing at such a simple, decent pleasure.

A strike from, what, 300 feet? More?

The rest of Thursday night, spent over a few minutes, spent 60 feet and a few inches from his target, was distinctly less whimsical. And utterly less precise.

He stood before his locker, his left shoulder dressed in ice, his arms crossed against his chest, his eyes and lower lip obediently steady.

The Rangers had lost in so many ways again. Then they pushed through a crowded clubhouse, stepped over piles of duffel bags and equipment headed home to Arlington, it all arranged so that nothing would be left behind. There is a system here, meticulousness practiced over years of nights just like this. And yet here was this young man in the midst of methodical chaos, explaining how he – somehow, some way, and gruesomely – had lost the strike zone.

His fastball, he said, had gone unreliable. So, he’d stood out there, the crowd loud and delirious in the spectacle of late October, taken his grip, leaned into his delivery, and watched the game swerve, dip and ride away.

“It was going different directions,” he said. “It was cutting. Sinking. I just lost feel for it.”

Nate Schierholtz(notes), the left-handed hitter he’d been assigned, walked on four pitches. So did Cody Ross(notes), the next guy. Holland, who’d been so exact nine days before against the celebrated New York Yankees’ lineup, who’d been asked for one out with a Giants runner already at first base, had loaded the bases.

To his left, the bullpen mound was empty. To his right, Aubrey Huff(notes), another left-handed hitter, one more chance to maintain a two-run deficit and one more shot for the middle of the Rangers’ order in the ninth.

“I thought he would correct himself,” Rangers manager Ron Washington said.

Holland threw three more fastballs. They were above the strike zone, or wide of the strike zone, or both.

He took the ball back from catcher Matt Treanor(notes). A run would injure the Rangers’ chance to come back. The Giants’ closer – Brian Wilson(notes) – hadn’t allowed an earned run in the postseason. He was sitting on the Giants’ bench, ready for the ninth inning. Maybe the Rangers could score a couple runs. But, three?

“I really wasn’t thinking too much about it,” Holland said. “I was just trying to make my pitches.”

Treanor asked for a fastball. After 11 consecutive balls, this fastball clipped the top of the strike zone.

“I felt like he could finally get back in the groove,” Washington said.

Still, another lefty, Michael Kirkman(notes), was hurrying through his warm-up pitches in the bullpen. Neftali Feliz(notes), the Rangers’ best reliever, sat nearby, watching like everybody else. From the cocoon of a ballgame – just a ballgame – now the mound was crowded with all those people in Holland’s head, all those hours getting to here. In his hand, a ball that felt too small. From the wrist down, a grip that had become unreliable.

Treanor had requested from Holland a couple sliders to previous hitters. But, Holland’s fastball had nice velocity, in the mid-90s. And it had wonderful late movement. So Holland’s plan was always to throw it toward the middle, let it do what it always does, skip to the corners or fall without warning, and that was Treanor’s plan, too, in the final critical moments of Game 2.

And wouldn’t you know that the next fastball would miss again, another ball, the 12th in 13 pitches. Buster Posey(notes), who’d reached first what seemed like hours earlier on a scratch single, trotted 90 feet for the Giants’ third run. Six more would follow.

“We can get into all kinds of mechanics,” Mike Maddux, the Rangers’ pitching coach, said. “Derek’s a big reason we’re here. Tonight didn’t work for him. You come in, generally he just pounds the strike zone. Tonight, he missed the strike zone. It allowed them to be very, very selective.”

Maddux patted his heart with his hand. He’d gone out to the mound after eight consecutive balls, then had Washington brush past him on his way for the baseball after another five pitches.

“It kills,” Maddux said, sympathetic for the kid. “It kills everybody.”

There will be more games to come, of course. They’ll all get on a plane, lugging baggage they’d come with and some they’d acquired over two blowouts here. They’ll hope for better. A lot better.

“I expected more out of us,” center fielder Josh Hamilton(notes) said.

Yes, they’d lost in so many ways, though perhaps the one that won’t die is the out that didn’t come in the eighth inning of Game 2, and why it wouldn’t come.

At last, Holland had handed over the baseball and headed to the dugout, passing the place where he’d laughed so easily hours earlier. The game went with him.

His eyes and posture still sturdy, Holland shook his head as he relived those 13 pitches, then the simple gesture of handing the baseball to his manager, and what it all meant.

“That’s it,” he said. “It’s over. I’m out.”