ARLINGTON -- Dustin Harris was designated for assignment on July 31, when the Rangers acquired a trio of pitchers at the Trade Deadline. He cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A Round Rock on Aug. 3.
The 26-year-old had hit just .200 over a brief stint with the big league club this season.
“That's how the sport is,” Harris said. “If you're not producing, you're not gonna get or keep a job.”
Harris has spent the last month with the Express, where he had hit safely in each of his last 17 games dating back to Aug. 15 at a .414 clip. In fact, he homered on Thursday night in Albuquerque before being told that he would rejoin the big league club with Adolis García going on the injured list.
He didn’t enter Friday night’s matchup against the Astros until the 10th inning as a pinch-runner for Jake Burger. But in the 12th, he laced a walk-off single down the right-field line off Lance McCullers Jr., capping a brilliant 4-3 victory for the Rangers.
It marked Harris’ first career walk-off and the Rangers’ ninth walk-off of 2025. He also snapped Texas’ 0-for-27 spell with runners in scoring position, dating back to Tuesday night in Arizona.
“That's quite the at-bat, wasn’t it?” said manager Bruce Bochy. “The kids have come up and have done so much to contribute. It's good to see how these guys have come up and just the way they've handled themselves. That’s a pressure situation there, and I just love the way he handled himself.”
Harris is just the most recent Ranger to come up and contribute at just the right time. With names like Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, Adolis García and Evan Carter all on the injured list at the moment, Texas had needed guys to step up and do a job.
Harris and Cody Freeman and Alejandro Osuna and Michael Helman and more have all done just that.
“When you have the injuries that we have, a lot of core guys are out, we need them and they're coming through, doing some really good things, all of them,” Bochy said. “There's no point talking about the injuries. You’ve got to focus forward. They're taking advantage of it. They're playing the game of baseball. I'm proud of these young kids, because you're in a lot of important games right now. You wouldn't know it by watching them play.”
Last week, in West Sacramento, Merrill Kelly admitted how weird it had been since he joined the Rangers at the Trade Deadline.
Weird isn’t bad, per se. But he has experienced a lot of ups and downs in his lone month in Texas, including a pair of four-game losing streaks, a team-wide visit from the injury bug and another six-game winning streak to close out the month of August.
That’s quite a lot for somebody that was brought in to assist in a postseason push.
“It’s just more baseball,” Kelly said last week. “Every season is different. Every team is different. The ebbs and flows of the season are different for everybody. You're not going to have a team that's perfect all year.
“I got to give our guys a lot of credit. You speak on all the injuries that we've had, [we’ve brought] ourselves back and put ourselves in contention. We're scrapping and we're playing good baseball right now. We've turned it around, I think it’s just a lot of credit to the guys in the clubhouse. It's the next-man-up mentality. We're going to keep pushing.”
The walk-off courtesy of the next-man-up mentality was the highlight, but Kelly did some pushing of his own much earlier in the night, throwing seven innings of one-run ball to help the Rangers.
Friday’s win didn’t come easy. That much is obvious. Kelly and the Rangers held a lead for much of the night before set-up man Chris Martin surrendered a game-tying two-run homer to Carlos Correa in the eighth inning that would ultimately send the two AL West rivals to extra innings.
It didn’t get easier in extras either. For either team. From the ninth to 12th innings, both the Rangers and Astros failed to push a single run across.
But eventually, the Rangers came out on top, well after Kelly had left the game. For him, this game was just an illustration of what the last few weeks have been like on this ballclub.
“[When you get] an influx of young guys, young guys are obviously unproven, and I think that it bodes well for them,” Kelly said. “I think that's an advantage on our side. A lot of those guys are hungry to be here, hungry to stay here. I think it kind of just injects some good energy into a team that has a lot of veteran guys, a lot of experience. You mix that with the young guys who are scratching and clawing to stay in the big leagues and I think it's a recipe for some good baseball.”