ANAHEIM, Calif. -- If there is any hope for the Rangers this season to be anything more than just another rebuilding team waiting for the draft and the trade deadline, it lays mostly with a pitching staff rebounding from injuries and overachieving.

Only 10 games into the season, the Rangers are already in a perilous spot where that is concerned.

After Sunday's 7-2 loss to Los Angeles, just consider these points:

-- There is one inning's difference between the workloads of the starting rotation (44) and the bullpen (43). To say that is unsustainable is a bit of an understatement. The starter has gone as far as five innings just three times in the first 10 games. Shelby Miller, who started Sunday, barely made it through two.

-- The rotation has already lost one starter -- Edinson Volquez -- to an injury. The club won't get final word on the status of Volquez's right elbow until the middle of the week when he undergoes an MRI, but at the minimum, there is going to be a significant stay on the injured list. Perhaps more likely: He's made his last major league start. The Rangers will go to Adrian Sampson to replace him, but they've quickly run short of depth options.

-- Whatever else happens, they will still have to face Mike Trout. And they have no answers for him, yet. He homered five times in the four-game series and reached base 13 times in 18 plate appearances. They have a week to find better solutions before Trout comes to Arlington. And they've got a total of six more games against him before the end of May.

"There is obviously a lot of room for improvement," manager Chris Woodward said. "We need to attack more in the zone. We're throwing a lot of pitches. There are things that have to get better."

Making his second start for the Rangers, Miller was not able to attack. He has struggled to find any consistency with his fastball and, as a result, he's been in trouble quickly.

Sunday, he was given a 2-0 lead heading to the bottom of the second but loaded the bases quickly on a single and two walks. He also hit a batter and allowed a two-run single. And this was all without throwing a pitch to Trout. The Rangers intentionally walked him when he came up with first base open.

By the end of the inning, the Rangers trailed 4-2 and Miller had thrown 39 pitches in the inning. That's a danger zone for any pitcher, let alone one who is still working his way back from Tommy John surgery.

He allowed the first two batters of the third inning to reach, though one came on a fielding error by third baseman Asdrubal Cabrera. When Woodward then pulled him, he'd thrown 67 pitches to get six outs.

In two outings this season, Miller has thrown 155 pitches in 52/3 innings. Miller has not been able to command his fastball for strikes.

"The velocity is there, but when you are trying to be too aggressive and throw it harder, it just flattens out and stays up," Miller said. "That's what it is doing right now. I tried to do too much, and it put me constantly behind in counts."

"It's been a struggle all spring," Woodward said of Miller's fastball command. "It's really tough to get outs in this league when the fastball command is not there."

The short outings have put early stress on the bullpen. In the four games in Anaheim, the relievers actually pitched more innings (17) than the starters (16). Over the final two games of the series, started by Drew Smyly and Miller, the bullpen had to combine for 102/3 of the 16 total innings pitched. With the possibility of Smyly and Miller continuing to pitch back-to-back, it makes planning to cover innings and then recover afterward all the more difficult.

On Monday, the Rangers are fortunate. They have a day off to let the bullpen recover. They will have another Thursday. Soon, though, the off days are going to shrivel up and fade away.

And if the Rangers don't get more out of their starting rotation soon, that's the same thing that will happen to the idea of this team making anything of the season.

Twitter: @EvanPGrant

Short-armed

Due to seven starts of less than five innings, the Rangers starting rotation and bullpen have almost identical innings pitched totals through the first 10 games. A look at some key numbers by the two groups.