The Sunday Read: Q&A with Rangers GM Chris Young, who hasn’t pressed the panic button

(AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

The general manager of a major-league team is a busy person, and things are always coming up.

That’s how Texas Rangers GM Chris Young ended up on the phone around 10 p.m. Friday talking to a reporter.

But that wouldn’t be the end to a day that started in Seattle, where he had watched the Rangers snap a five-game losing streak Thursday night by rallying to an 8-6 win after trailing 5-0 in the first inning.

He had another Rangers game to monitor Friday.

They had shot to a 5-1 lead at Oakland by the time Young figured out that it wasn’t his home Internet connection causing the glitches on the AppleTV+ broadcast. The Rangers ended up winning 8-1 for their second straight victory and first official winning streak of the 2022 season.

Young, who played 13 seasons in the majors, could see it coming after the Rangers avoided a three-game sweep to the Mariners on Thursday.

“More than anything, I think just the guys were really tired of losing,” Young said. “They’re fighters. These guys are proud, and they expect better both of the team and of themselves. It just felt like, ‘OK, let’s go. Enough of this.'”

The Rangers will take a three-game winning streak into their Sunday matinee at the sparsely populated Oakland Coliseum. A victory would give the Rangers a three-game sweep and a winning road trip.

Things don’t seem quite as dire as they did after that first inning Thursday, but the Rangers likely have more of those stretches ahead this season.

Young knows that, and won’t be reaching for the panic button that some fans were mashing over the first 10 games of the season.

That doesn’t mean changes aren’t coming at some point, but as he said during this Q&A, the group currently assembled will improve.