What is the story about?
- Well, dangit.
- No sweep.
- Winning streak is over.
- No longer in first place.
- And with the Astros and the White Sox winning, the Rangers are one out in the division and two out in the Wild Card race, and are tied with Toronto.
- And things seemed to be going so well for a while.
- Tyler Alexander did his opening thing. Cody Bradford struck out the side in his first inning of work and cruised along until being lifted in the sixth after allowing a one out hit. The Rangers caught a break when Adley Rutschman’s blast to left center off of Chase Silseth, who reliever Bradford, bounded into the seats for a ground rule double, meaning that Wilyer Abreu, whose single had chased Bradford, had to stop at third rather than scoring.
- Top of the seventh inning, the Rangers had a 3-0 lead, and things seemed under control.
- Robby Ahlstrom, asked to handle the seventh, walked the first two batters he faced, then gave up a scarily-deep fly ball to Nick Sogard. After a Roman Anthony RBI groundout, Jakob Junis came in to get the final batter and, we figured, take care of the eighth inning.
- I will note that Ahlstrom was a curious choice to pitch the seventh. I assumed that the Rangers didn’t want to use Junis, and so were saving Robert Garcia for the eighth, and that’s why Ahlstrom pitched the seventh. That turned out not to be the case, given that Junis was brought in when Ahlstrom got into trouble.
- Ahlstrom hadn’t pitched in a week, and had a 5.94 ERA and 4.97 FIP coming into the game. In his first nine major league games, Ahlstrom allowed one run. Since then, prior to yesterday’s game, Ahlstrom had a 7.67 ERA and 5.73 FIP in 27 innings.
- He’s not someone you’d think a playoff contender would be wanting to rely upon in the late innings of a close game.
- Kind of makes you think maybe the Rangers should have gone out and gotten another reliever or two at the deadline, no?
- Meanewhile, a walk and a hit by pitch from Junis to start the eighth meant an early end to his night, with Jacob Latz summoned for a six out save.
- Latz has done the six out save before this year. He had seven of them coming into this game. An eighth wasn’t too much to ask for, was it?
- Apparently it was. Trevor Story parked a 2-2 pitch into the bleachers, flipping a 3-1 Rangers lead into a 4-3 deficit. And that, as things shook out, was that.
- The bats seemed poised to do good things early on. A Josh Jung home run put the Rangers up in the first, and a pair of walks by Wyatt Langford and Jake Burger in the second, followed by a pair of bunts sandwiched around a Danny Jansen single, made it a 3-0 game. Could the Rangers knock Sonny Gray out early, make this a blowout, or at least a nice comfy game?
- No, dear reader, they could not. In fact, after the Ezequiel Duran pop out with Jansen on second that ended the second inning, the Rangers didn’t get another runner in scoring position all game.
- Texas only had five hits all game — two of them from the much-maligned Danny Jansen. The other two were Jung’s first inning homer and a one out Corey Seager single in the eighth that was prompted erased by a Jung GIDP.
- Just to make it extra hurty, Jake Burger came up as the winning run in the bottom of the ninth after Wyatt Langford drew a one out walk, only to hit into a game ending double play.
- Oh loss, where is your sting? Oh defeat, where is your victory?
- Oh, wait, here it is. Loss’s sting and defeat’s victory are right here. Don’t know how I missed seeing them.
- Tyler Alexander’s fastball hit 92.2 mph. Cody Bradford touched 90.5 mph with his fastball, averaging 88.6 mph. Chase Silseth’s fastball maxed out at 96.8 mph. Robby Ahlstrom reached 96.3 mph with his sinker. Jakob Junis topped ouat at 93.3 mph with his sinker. Jacob Latz’s fastball hit 95.9 mph. Jordan Montgomery’s sinker touched 91.7 mph.
- Jake Burger had a 107.9 mph groundout. Wyatt Langford had a 104.8 mph fly out. Josh Jung had a 104.8 mph fly out and a 102.3 mph GIDP. Corey Seager had a 100.1 mph single.
- Shake it off, and handle Toronto.
