What is the story about?
Angels
2, Rangers 1
- I will take the blame for this one.
- You see, on the Yahoo sports app on my phone on Sunday there was a blurb about the Rangers/Angels game that said “Don’t expect a lot of scoring in this duel between two lefty aces.”
- I screenshotted it and posted it, saying that the two “lefty aces” were MacKenzie Gore and Reid Detmers. Much hilarity, right?
- And so what happens? Reid Detmers goes out and carves up the Rangers. After a 1-2-3 first, he allows a leadoff homer in the second to Jake Burger, then retires the next 21 batters he faces in a row.
- Detmers strikes out 14 batters while retiring 24 of 25 batters faced. It is one of teh most dominante performances of the season.
- And MacKenzie Gore, meanwhile, also allows just one hit and one run. He does it in six innings, though, and only strikes out seven while walking two batters.
- See what happens? I make jokes, and the universe decides to mock me.
- Now, you may think that I’m not so important that the universe would go out of its way to make this happen just to mock me. And that is a reasonable point.
- However, what if I am that important? Or what if my consciousness is breaking off into the particularly strand of universes that involves being mocked? Have you thought of that?
- The ninth inning also seemed designed to mock Rangers fans in general, should we wish to take a particularly solipsistic view of the universe.
- Two outs in the ninth, and the Rangers get their second baserunner of the game. They follow it up with their third and fourth baserunners of the game, bringing up Jake Burger, with the bases loaded, the person responsible for their one run of the game. Jake Burger, in position to give the Rangers the lead.
- And he strikes out.
- Then the bottom of the ninth, Gavin Collyer…
- I will say, as an aside, the decision to use Gavin Collyer in that situation was surprising to me. Collyer was just called up, and had pitched the day before for Round Rock.
- Collyer strikes out a batter, gives up a single, hits a batter…
- Collyer, I will note, has now hit four batters on the season. That’s a lot for someone who has faced just 57 major league batters. Nathan Eovaldi has hit 5 batters this year, and no one else on the team has hit more than two.
- Collyer does his job and gets a weak roller right to Justin Foscue. Foscue, who had spoken the day before about feeling bad for getting picked off yet again on Saturday and letting the team down, has an easy 4-3 double play ahead of him.
- He steps on second, bobbles the transition of the ball from his glove to his throwing hand, then rushing the throw, putting it into the dirt. Jake Burger doesn’t scoop it. Pinch runner Donovan Walton scores from second. The Angels walk it off.
- How does one, as a fan, even react to a loss like that?
- I don’t know the answer to that.
- MacKenzie Gore maxed out at 96.7 mph with his fastball, averaging 95.6 mph. Jakob Junis hit 93.1 mph with his sinker. Gavin Collyer’s fastball touched 97.2 mph.
- Jake Burger had a 101.9 mph fly out and a 101.1 mph home run. Justin Foscue had a 101.4 mph fly out. Sam Haggerty had a 100.0 mph ground out.
- Hopefully things will go better at home.
