CLERMONT — The seasoned infield starting for the Rangers, Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and Nathaniel Lowe, were removed by manager Bruce Bochy for the second time in three days multiple innings before the game’s conclusion.

It served as a reminder on both days of how disastrous Texas’ weekend had been.

The Rangers’ 9-2 loss to the Guardians on Sunday afternoon brought a bad weekend for Progressive Field to a close. After playing in one of the best series of the year, a four-game whitewash in Toronto, Texas then played in one of the worst, losing 23-6.

13 games remain: 3 against BOS, 3 vs SEA, 3 at LAA, and 4 against SEA.New standings: The Mariners (81-68), who were swept by the Dodgers, are in third place, one game ahead of the Rangers (81-67), who are a half-game behind the Blue Jays (83-67), who defeated the Red Sox on Sunday. Texas is 1 1/2 games back of Kansas City-beating Houston (84-66) in the AL West.Lose to Houston, win over Toronto, and lead over Seattle serve as tiebreakers.The Rangers were swept by Cleveland and failed to make any progress in the standings of the American League West or the Wild Card instead of riding that momentum from Toronto back to the United States.

“That’s baseball,” remarked Bochy. It can be demeaning at times. Because we couldn’t have pitched much worse when we came down here and couldn’t have played any better baseball there in Toronto. We tried yesterday but were unable to go for any runs. The key is scoring a couple runs and having a strong inning like they did. You acknowledge them once more. They gave us a hard sell. We had a run early on in the day, so you would think we could build some momentum, but we were unable to.

As the Rangers return home for one of their most significant homestands of the season, here are three lessons to be learned from the challenging series in Cleveland.

Bullpen is still having trouble.When Cleveland sent 14 hitters to the plate in the fourth inning, resulting in a nine-run frame that would make the difference, the Rangers were ultimately defeated. In Max Scherzer’s place in the rotation, rookie Cody Bradford received the start, and he breezed through the first three innings while facing just one more batter than necessary.

The situation swiftly deteriorated as Bradford allowed José Ramirez to hit a leadoff home run in the fourth. Bradford and right-hander Jonathan Hernández each took a hit for six runs.

In his first big league outing of the season, rookie Jake Latz threw two perfect innings to become the only pitcher for the Rangers to record a scoreless outing.

Bochy stated, “We just had one of those innings where we just couldn’t stop it.” It’s a sensation of helplessness, you know? Anything that could go wrong did. A mistake down the left-field line followed by the comebacker Hernández couldn’t handle cost us nine runs in quick succession.

Large bats stutterThe bullpen’s ups and downs have dominated the season’s narrative, but the Rangers’ explosive offense struck a brick wall in Cleveland. Texas has relied on its top four hitters — Marcus Semien, Corey Seager, Nathaniel Lowe, and Mitch Garver — to keep the offensive machine humming while Adolis Garca and Josh Jung are still out with injuries.

But against the Guardians, all four were at a loss.

2-for-10 for SemienSeager is 0-11.2-for-10 for Lowe1-for-12 for GarverThe offense’s out-of-character troubles against a strong pitching staff were just as much of a factor for the sweep as the pitching staff’s lackluster performance in two of the three games this weekend.

Bochy advised, “You’ve got to keep fighting.” They scored nine, after all. Again, last season, we did nothing but succeed. We had a great game. I’ll admit that we didn’t do a number of things in this series correctly. They threw hard at us when they were pitching. We were unable to launch any offensive actions. Today’s ninth inning saw us with one run once more. That won’t be successful. We are a squad that has to score some runs, and we struggled to do that in this series.

Rookie never ceases to amazeThe fact that Evan Carter has persisted in proving he belongs in the major leagues is the only positive to come out of this past weekend in Cleveland. The outfielder—MLB Pipeline’s eighth-ranked prospect overall—has lived up to expectations.

Carter (21 years, 19 days) became the youngest Ranger ever with at least seven walks in his first nine career games with a plate appearance after reaching base on two walks on Sunday. Through his first 10 big league games, Carter had a slash line of.280/.424/.440.