When most people think of a “clutch player,” a catcher isn’t usually someone who comes to mind.

It’s a good thing Rangers manager Bruce Bochy and catcher Jonah Heim don’t fit into the “most people” category.

Heim ripped a walkoff single to collect his fifth career walkoff hit and lift the Rangers to a 4-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.

“He’s clutch,” Bochy said after the game. “That’s pretty impressive at this stage of his career to have five walkoffs already. He shortened up there and was thinking up the middle and got a nice base hit”.

With the win, the Rangers earned their first series sweep of the season and secured an 8-2 start to the year. 2025 marks just the fourth time in Rangers history to post 8+ wins in the club’s first ten games.

One batter prior to Heim’s walk-off hit, Josh Smith flipped a ball into left field and was able to leg out a double to put himself in scoring position.

“It was huge,” Heim said when talking about Smith making it to second base. “A base hit wins it right there [but] if he’s standing on first, maybe he tries to steal a base and we’re in the same spot but if he’s standing on first then I gotta try to shoot a gap or even we gotta get two hits to win that game so, huge momentum shift and huge play to get to second there”.

In a tight game with their three best leverage arms down, it was up to some outside contributors to work in tight spots out of the bullpen in this game.

Hoby Milner pitched two perfect innings, and Jacob Webb fired a scoreless 9th to help set up Heim’s walkoff. Marc Church pitched the 8th inning and allowed a leadoff walk followed by a double which preceded two Tampa Bay run-scoring outs to tie the game.

“Pitching again, what a great job, I know a little hiccup there by Churchy [Marc Church], walked that leadoff hitter but settled in and didn’t let it get away from him but everybody, it seems like it’s someone different every day”.

The strong bullpen effort followed Kumar Rocker, who took the ball for Texas today and delivered a strong bounce-back performance. He finished with a final line of 5 IP 6H (all singles) 1 ER 0BB and 1K.

“He threw strikes with all his pitches [and] used his breaking ball well,” Bochy said of Rocker. “He had a good fastball going, he just looked like a different guy out there didn’t he?”.

Rocker didn’t factor into the decision as he left with the game tied at one thanks to a Marcus Semien RBI fielder’s choice in the 3rd.

Just two of the Rangers’ seven hits were non-singles, one of which was Smith’s double in the 9th and the other being off the bat of Corey Seager, who connected on his first home run of the season in the sixth inning.