Spring Training Game 1: Three Up, Three Down.

Ball.

(Photo by Gunnar Word/Texas Rangers/Getty Images)

New season, new edition of 3U3D, new graphic.

It’s ball time. Let’s go.

Three Up, Three Down (with no paywall today) from Kansas City 5, Texas 2.

Up First.

Easily, my favorite thing about this . . .

. . . is the name at the bottom. It was never a foregone conclusion that Nathan Eovaldi was going to continue, and possibly ride out, his career as a member of the Texas Rangers, but it makes such a huge difference in the rotation and team outlook that he is locked up here for another three years. To pitch and to mentor.

His first inning today was clean, his second was not. Neither matters. He’s healthy, and he’s here, and if 10 months from now the Rangers have a baseball game scheduled, I’ll take the two atop the Texas rotation against anyone else’s.

A lot of things have to be in place — and a lot of things have to go right — at a lot of different times in a baseball season for it to deliver a parade. This whole attack feels a ton better with Eovaldi and Jacob deGrom anchoring things on the mound, and with the group of Tyler Mahle and Cody Bradford and Kumar Rocker and Jon Gray battling for the three-spot on down, rather than all pushed up a slot.

Up Second.

Performance out of young players battling for trust is far more important than any veteran’s production in spring training games, certainly in February, but one moment stood out for me as far as the core guys go.

Eovaldi was able to get out of the first inning on 10 pitches when, after giving up a leadoff single to Jonathan India and getting Bobby Witt Jr. to pop out, he got Vinnie Pasquantino to ground solidly to first baseman Jake Burger. Given the 28-year-old’s bat-first profile at first base, I stopped whatever else I was doing to see how the moment would play out.

Burger deftly fielded the 90-mph grounder, stepped on the bag, and made a perfect throw to second base, where Corey Seager was able to put the tag down on India and end the frame.

The F-8 and 5-3 that started and finished Burger’s day at the plate: meaningless. Knowing the onetime third baseman can make the tough plays that will be asked of him at first base, and make them look easy, is a bigger deal.

Up Third.

Of the younger players, three stood out for me, all in the seventh and eighth innings.

Lefthander Robby Ahlstrom, in his first major-league spring training action that wasn’t the result of a JIC assignment, showed a variety of pitches in the bottom of the seventh, getting a weak groundout to first on a 92.8-mph four-seamer, allowing a comebacker single (off his glove) on a curve down in the zone, punching out future star Jac Caglianone on a slider down and away, and coaxing a soft flyout to center on a changeup below the zone. Solid.

In the next half-inning, after journeyman catcher Chad Wallach doubled to start the frame, perpetual fringe first base prospect Blaine Crim flared an inside fastball the other way to send Wallach to third. Two pitches later, right fielder Trevor Hauver — the one player in the Joey Gallo trade who has yet to reach the majors (Josh Smith, Ezequiel Duran, and Glenn Otto are the others who came over from the Yankees) — smoked an inside left-on-left fastball to the track in right center field. Hauver turned 93.1 mph around and sent it 101.9 mph nearly 370 feet, short-hopping the wall for two bases and driving both Wallach and Crim in to tie the game, 2-2.

In the bottom of the inning, after journeyman righthander Nolan Hoffman allowed Kansas City to reclaim a 5-2 lead, left fielder Alejandro Osuna (who hit a 102.9 mph single earlier in the game) prevented another two Royals runs with what Matt Hicks and Jared Sandler described as a spectacular sliding catch on the warning track just past the foul line to end the inning.

Some good moments from a handful of prospects who are not on the front lines of those pushing hard for big-league work right now, but got chances today to open some eyes and earn some trust from a coaching staff they could all stand to impress, and converted on those chances.

One Down.

On the other hand, Osuna was picked off of first base after that single in the sixth. Not a burner but a relatively effective basestealer in the minors (he succeeded on 17 of 23 attempts between High-A Hickory and Double-A Frisco in 2024), that’s the kind of thing that can stick out while he’s here to get time in big-league exhibitions, as much as 100-mph base hits and sprawling catches in the outfield.

Two Down.

The Rangers were 1 of 3 in our first look at how ball-strike challenges are going to affect the game. Alan Trejo challenged the first pitch of his at-bat with two outs and nobody on in the top of the eighth, and was unsuccessful.

In the bottom of that inning, with the Rangers having one challenge left to exhaust, Wallach challenged a ball as a catcher and was awarded a strike (meaning the Rangers’ second opportunity to challenge was retained) — and then tried it again a few pitches later and failed.

I trust that the Rangers planned this, given that the challenges all took place in the eighth (with the Royals leading, there was likely not going to a bottom of the ninth). This is the time to work through the new rules with a little trial and error.

Three Down.

The reason that the largely representative starting lineup atop this entry included non-roster invite Sam Haggerty in left field is probably because Wyatt Langford has an oblique strain that is expected to cost him about a week of action.

Let’s chalk this up to the “we won’t even remember this in a couple weeks” category, shall we?

Please?

Due Up.

The Rangers are right back in Surprise tomorrow afternoon and get to bat last this time, hosting Osleivis Basabe, Sam Huff, and the rest of the Giants.

I’m sure I’ll look back at this in a week or two and laugh — but man, as I sit here right now . . . I can’t wait.