On Monday, the Rangers returned to Globe Life Field to take on the Los Angeles Angels in the first of four after a brief three-game road trip which saw the Rangers go 1-2 in St.Pete against the Rays.
Before the game began, there were some newsworthy notes across the organization. Before the game, Manager Bruce Bochy announced that Jon Gray would be scratched from tomorrow’s start with a blister. Cody Bradford, who is with the team in Arlington, will likely get the start tomorrow.
Bochy also announced that Jacob deGrom underwent a successful Tommy John surgery this morning. It will be an uphill battle to recover for deGrom, who is not expected back until the end of next season after his second TJ surgery.
As for the game itself, it was a wild one. Ezequiel Duran would get the Rangers on the board first in the second when he launched a three-run homer 421 feet into the left field seats to score himself, Jonah Heim, and Josh Jung and put the Rangers up 3-0.
With the Rangers up 3-1, both Josh Jung and Mitch Garver connected on two-out RBI singles to put Texas up 5-1 after three. At that point, it looked like the best offense in baseball was going to do it again and come through for Texas, like Ranger fans were so used to seeing.
However, that would not be the case.
Dane Dunning got the start for the Rangers tonight, and his command was pretty much off from the git-go. The Rangers’ righty walked five batters in five innings. Things really started to unravel for Dunning in the 4th inning, where three hits, a walk, and a wild pitch led to the Angels scoring three runs to cut the Rangers’ lead to 5-4.
Grant Anderson was first out of the Rangers pen and pitched a very good 10-pitch 1-2-3 6th inning, but in the 7th, he would run into some trouble in the form of Shohei Ohtani. The Japanese superstar would crush an opposite-field homer to tie the game at five in the 7th.
After Josh Sborz did a really nice job getting out of a jam in the 7th and pitching a scoreless 8th inning, the game was still tied at five, heading to the 9th.
Will Smith would come on to pitch the 9th for the Rangers and face Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, and Anthony Rendon, which has to be one of the more difficult tasks in baseball. However, Smith sent them down 1-2-3 to keep this game tied, heading bottom nine! Not only did he do it in the 9th, but he would go on to strand the zombie runner on 3rd in the 10th to set up a potential for the Rangers to win the bottom ten
In both the 9th, 10th, and 11th innings, the Rangers would get the winning run to scoring position with less than two outs. However, much to everyone’s surprise, one of the best offenses in baseball would fail to score that runner each time.
The Rangers had one too many chances to score in extras and just didn’t get it done, and once again, Shohei Ohtani made them pay by hitting a two-run home run in the bottom of the 12th to put the Angels up 7-5.
By the end of this thing, the Rangers would fall to the Angels by a score of 9-6 in what is all more than likely the Rangers’ worst loss of the season.
The truth is, you HAVE to be able to find a way to win a game like this, but good teams do, in fact, lose these types of games.
Texas will be back in action tomorrow night at 7:05 in game two of their four-game series with the Angels.
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