On Opening Day the Rangers failed to gather a hit through the first three innings of the game before exploding for 9 runs in the 4th and eventually going on to win 11-7. Today was quite the opposite as the Rangers and Phillies met for the second of their three-game series.
Last year, Marcus Semien didn’t hit his first home run until May 28th when he hit a grand slam against his former team the Oakland A’s. Today in the second game of the season he drove the second pitch he saw into the Rangers bullpen for a leadoff homer. Semien’s smash combined with an RBI single from Robbie Grossman had the Rangers up 2-0 after the first inning.
For the second day in a row, the Rangers would have a starting pitcher make his Texas debut. This time it would be Avlin Texas native Nathan Eovaldi. The tall righty cruised through the first three innings scoreless, striking out four.
In the bottom half of the third, the Rangers would double their lead. Adolis Garcia and Nathaniel Lowe are now two of the longest-tenured Rangers and they led off the 4th with back-to-back doubles and would eventually score to double the Rangers’ lead to 4-0 after three.
One of those runs was driven in by Robbie Grossman who was on a tear throughout the first two games. With a sac fly in the 3rd and an RBI single in the first Grossman had 5 RBIs through the first 12 innings of baseball played this season.
The 4th inning was not very kind to Nathan Eovaldi after a walk from JT Realmuto and a double from Darick Hall the Phillies had two in scoring position with no one out. The very next batter was Nick Castellanos who laced a 101.6 MPH shot off the ankle of Nathan Eovaldi and into right field to score both Realmuto and Hall and cut the Ranger lead in half. The Phillies would tack on another run in the 5th after Trea Turner tripled and scored to make it 4-3 Rangers.
Nathan Eovaldi’s Rangers debut would be done after 5 innings which were pretty solid ones. The Texas native went 5 innings giving up just 3 runs on 6 hits. Eovaldi certainly pitched very well in his first outing as a Texas Ranger.
In the bottom of the 5th, Mitch Garver would step up to the plate with two runners on in his first game since July of last season. After being frustrated by a called strike which appeared a little bit low, Garver called his one timeout allowed per at bat and stepped back in to slam a three-run jimmy jack into the left field seats to extend the Rangers’ lead to 7-3.
Dane Dunning would be the first arm up out of the Rangers bullpen and he would be brilliant. Dunning would pitch three scoreless innings allowing just three hits in his first appearance out of the bullpen.
In the bottom of the 7th, it was officially “Mitch Garver day” at Globe Life Field. Garv Sauce crushed his second three-run home run of the day to make it 10-3 Rangers. Texas would tack on 3 more in the inning to make it 13-3 after 7.
By the end of the game, the Phillies put in Josh Harrison (an infielder) to pitch and when the Rangers looked up at the scoreboard at the end of the 8th inning, they lead 16-3.
Bruce Bochy would go with Taylor Hearn to get the last three outs as the Rangers lead by 13 and that’s exactly what he would do.
Texas dominated the Phillies to improve to 2-0 on the season. The Ranger’s offense had scored 27 runs in their first two games of the season.
The Rangers will be back at it tomorrow on Sunday night baseball at 6:00 PM where Martin Perez will take the bump as Texas looks to sweep the Phillies in the first series of the year.
