What is the story about?
Rangers
6, Yankees 1
- The Rangers have won a game! Huzzah!
- Not only did the Rangers win a game, they won it against one of the two teams in the American League with a record better than .500.
- That’s right, its mediocrity as far as the eye can see in the A.L. right now.
- Outstanding work by Nathan Eovaldi. Really top notch.
- Eight innings, eight Ks, which is some nice symmetry. 101 pitches, of which almost two-thirds were either splitters or curveballs.
- And even when Eovaldi did go fastball, he primarily used his cutter, which he threw 23 times. He only went with the fastball nine times, and threw four sinkers.
- 19 whiffs for Eovaldi, eight of them coming on the curveball. He threw it a lot more often than usual on Wednesday, and you can see why.
- The only damper was a home run by Aaron Judge, but I’m pretty sure Aaron Judge homers every game so we can let that go.
- Plus the Rangers actually scored some runs.
- Novel concept, that.
- Evan Carter homered and Corey Seager homered. We like that, right?
- The Rangers are two games below .500 now, but still just a game back of the A’s, and tied with the Mariners. That mediocrity I was talking about earlier, you know.
- I mentioned that the Yankees are one of two teams in the American League above .500. They are 25-12, tied with the Cubs for the second-best record in baseball, behind the 26-12 Atlanta Braves.
- The other team in the A.L. above .500? The Tampa Bay Rays. They are 24-12.
- Yeah, that surprised me, too.
- Tampa has won 6 in a row and 12 of their last 13. In fact, Tampa has three six game winning streaks so far this year. Its weird.
- So there are four teams with 12 losses currently. There are also four teams with 23 losses — the Astros, the Angels, the Giants, and the Rockies.
- And there are six — count ‘em, six — teams with exactly 20 losses. That seems like a lot.
- Nathan Eovaldi touched 96.8 mph with his fastball, averaging 95.0 mph. Jacob Latz’s fastball reached 95.5 mph.
- Jake Burger had a 109.1 mph single and a 103.0 mph ground out. Ezequiel Duran had a 107.6 mph double and a 102.3 mph sacrifice fly. Evan Carter had a 106.2 mph ground out, and his home run was 99.6 mph. Brandon Nimmo had a 104.2 mph ground out. Corey Seager’s homer was 101.7 mph.
- Wins are good. Let’s do that more.
