ARLINGTON, Texas — Josh Smith clung to his phone in the Texas Rangers clubhouse before Monday’s game vs. the Houston Astros at Globe Life Field.He was locked onto ... the television coverage of Olympic pole vaulting.It’s not your normal pregame hype-up. But Swedish-American pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis — an LSU graduate and the brother of Smith’s former Tigers teammate Antoine Duplantis — had just leapt for a new world record and sent Smith into a frenzy by his locker.He sent the Rangers into a frenzy a few hours later.Smith hit a walk-off two-run home run in the bottom of the 10th inning off of Caleb Ferguson to lift the Rangers to a 4-3 win vs. the Astros. It represented an offensive jolt that Texas had lacked all game, too, one that nearly left Rangers starting pitcher Andrew Heaney on the wrong end of the run support battle once again.Heaney has gotten the fourthfewest run support of any starting pitcher in baseball who’s appeared in 20 or more games; the three who rank lower than Heaney pitch for the last-place Chicago White Sox (Garret Crochet), fourth-place Washington Nationals (Patrick Corbin) and Trevor Rogers, who spent the majority of his season with the last-place Miami Marlins before a deadline deal that sent him to the Baltimore Orioles.He has the fewest wins (4) and most losses (11) of any qualified starting pitcher with a sub-4.00 ERA leaguewide. He settled for his eighth no decision this season on Monday after six innings of one-hit, one-run ball. Houston third baseman Alex Bregman bashed a changeup into left field for a two-out home run in the third inning, but Heaney retired the next 10 batters he faced before Bochy lifted him at 80 pitches — the fewest he’d thrown in a start since May 1 vs. Washington — before the seventh inning.The Rangers eked out their first run on a fifth-inning Leody Taveras sacrifice fly that scored Nathaniel Lowe, who walked and took third base on a Adolis García single. Texas went hitless from then on until the eighth inning when Corey Seager tied the game with a solo home run off of Ryan Pressly that made it 2-2.Seager, the club’s player of the month in July, has homered four times in the first four games of August and has a team-high 23 on the season.Texas had a chance to walk the game off after rookie ...
