ANAHEIM, Calif. -- The Rangers have spent the last month absorbing a series of kicks to the guts.

Wednesday, they took one a couple of inches lower, figuratively speaking, of course.

And that was before a 7-4 loss to Los Angeles that trimmed their AL West lead to just 3.5 games over fast-charging Houston.

Already reeling from a flurry of injuries to the pitching staff and lethargic play, one doctor visit resulted in the loss of two key players: Shin-Soo Choo for 15 days and Prince Fielder for potentially the rest of the season. Hopefully, they at least got a group discount on the consultation with noted Los Angeles back specialist Dr. Robert Watkins.

The duo saw Dr. Watkins Wednesday. The doctor gave Choo an injection to battle some lower back inflammation. He gave Fielder potentially devastating news. He recommended surgery to either repair or fuse a herniated disc in his neck, virtually the same surgery he underwent two years ago. This time, Fielder has herniation in the C4/C5 area of his neck, just slightly above his previous spinal fusion surgery.

Fielder will see Dr. Drew Dossett in Dallas Friday to get a second opinion. He could pursue an epidural injection to try to relieve pain. If he has surgery, he will miss the remainder of the season, if not more. There are questions about how he would respond to a second surgery, the potential limitations in flexibility it might cause and how he would respond now that he's two years older than the first. Daniels declined to discuss the long-term prognosis; rather he wanted to wait to see what Dr. Dossett, who performed the first surgery, recommended.

Neither Fielder nor Choo was available for comment Wednesday.

Their teammates spoke for them.

"It's a little bit devastating, to be honest," Adrian Beltre said. "Prince has been a guy that we have come to count on. I know he's struggled some with results, but he seemed to show a lot of progress. He's important to this team. It's never a good time to hear this, but the way we've been playing it's worse. We just have to deal with it, stay confident and get the job done."

If anything, perhaps it does explain Fielder's mostly awful performance at the plate. If he's done for the year, his .212 batting average and .626 OPS will both represent career lows. Despite the lack of performance, he had not complained of soreness or weakness anywhere. Until Monday. After that game, he acknowledged "similar symptoms" to what he felt in 2014 before being diagnosed with the disc herniation, Daniels said.

It just continued the kind of month that tries a team's soul. The Rangers lost starting pitchers Derek Holland and Colby Lewis for at least 60 days apiece within three days of one another in late June. The starting rotation has been circling the drain ever since, going into Wednesday with an 8.06 ERA for July. The club has blown four leads of at least three runs in the last three weeks. They are 4-14 over their last 18 games.

Wednesday followed a similar pattern to other losses. A starter - this time Martin Perez - gave up a big inning early. This time it was the first. He allowed four runs, including a three-run homer to Jefry Marte, in the first inning and the rest of the night was just hot, sweaty and torturous.

Though the Rangers have an insurance policy on Fielder that pays 50 percent of his salary in the event of a long-term injury, they will not recoup any money in 2016. There is a 90-day deductible period before they can file a claim and there are not 90 days left in the season.

Daniels vowed that he would not let the injuries or the month's performance push him to make a trade simply for the act of concluding a transaction. The Rangers remain primarily focused on starting pitching with 12 days left before the non-waivers trade deadline and primarily on upper-tier pitchers who haven't become readily available at this point, according to sources. Among that group: Chicago's Chris Sale and Jose Quintana, Tampa Bay's Chris Archer and Oakland's Sonny Gray.

Daniels indicated that he would not suddenly swing towards searching for extra offense.

The Rangers will hope to get the injection of offense from Jurickson Profar. He's been a spark when he's played, though infrequently since early June. The Rangers will move him all over the field - he played second Wednesday - and will try to get by with an offense that may be lacking power.

"I don't want any one single guy to have to think that his contribution is any bigger than anybody else," Banister said. "The pass-the-baton mentality we have is to just create opportunities for the next guy instead of focusing on an individual performance. If we continue to do that, we can do well for ourselves."

But a lot - or at least more than had been - will fall to Profar. That is inevitable since his playing time will increase sharply.

"We just have to step up," he said. "I feel awful about this, really. Last night, I was talking to Prince in the dugout and I told him that we were going to start going up again and it was going to be because of him. I believed that. So it's shocking. We still have a good team, though. We need to go through the war and play like the Texas Rangers."

First, though, the gut - and other kicks - must stop coming.

Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant