The Texas Rangers scored four runs while the Houston Astros scored two runs.
The Rangers haven’t won a season series against the Astros since 2016. The closest they’ve come since then was a 5-5 mark during the COVID-shortened 2020 season. Last year, needing a win in the last two games of the season series against Houston, Texas was felled twice in a row to lose the Silver Boot seven games to six.
Nowadays the teams play each other 13 times per season. This year, they’ve now played ten times with Texas
winning six of those games. To win the season series, a team must win seven games. Next week, the Rangers will travel to formerly Minute Maid Park with a chance to win the season series with a victory.
To get to this point today, the Rangers needed to rebound for an 11-0 loss yesterday following their marathon walk-off win in extras on Friday night.
Decked out in the Sunday best, Texas didn’t get much going at the plate for much of the game but they made good on a few of their chances. Notably, the Rangers scored a run via a hit with runners in scoring position after scoring their first couple of runs without the benefit of a hit with RISP.
That hit came off the bat of Jake Burger who followed up an RBI Josh Jung double with a wall-scraping, oppo dong that basically changed the opinion of the whole weekend.
Meanwhile, the pitching, which has been the backbone for the entire operation all season, came through with a great performance with today’s starter Patrick Corbin allowing just one run and the bullpen (today a trio of Phil Maton, Robert Garcia, and Shawn Armstrong) backing him up with a meager one run allowed.
With the series win, the Rangers picked up a game in the standings on Houston and ultimately remained equal with Seattle. They’re still going to be playing really difficult opponents over the next week or more so they can’t take the foot off the gas for even a moment.
Player of the Game: Burger’s home run was the big moment of the game. The two-run shot indeed proved the difference with Jung’s RBI double a batter prior also feeling pretty cathartic after worries that the Rangers might perhaps score their lone run of the game on a strikeout, as funny and poetic as that would have been.
However, despite me reluctance to ever heap praise on Corbin, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Corbin out-dueled Houston’s rotation-topping lefty Framber Valdez by allowing just one run in 5.2 innings of work.
The Rangers certainly don’t win this game without Corbin stepping up and quieting a lineup that scored 11 runs on Texas just a day ago.
Up Next: The Rangers welcome baseball’s best team to Arlington for a three-game set with Texas sending LHP Jacob Latz to the mound to take on Milwaukee’s lefty Jose Quintana.
The Monday evening first pitch in the series opener from The Shed is scheduled for 7:05 pm CT and will be carried on the Rangers Sports Network.
