Lewis Gave Rangers Exactly What They Needed

No matter how old Colby Lewis gets, or how many injuries he adds on to his long list of ailments, you never quit relying on the grizzled veteran.

And on Wednesday night, with the Rangers in desperate need of a deep outing from their starting pitcher to help preserve a thin bullpen, they got just that from Lewis against a team and in a building he'd traditonally struggled horribly.

Sure, Lewis gave up a crushing game-tying home run in the sixth inning after a two-out walk. That wasn't good. But the key was he came back and worked another inning to finish the game with 106 pitches to mark just the fourth time this year a Rangers starter had completed seven innings. He now has two of those with the other two belonging to Cole Hamels and A.J. Griffin.

Lewis took a no-decision after leaving the game with a 3-3 tie, but he was able to pitch long enough to keep Jeff Banister in his plan of giving Sam Dyson, Shawn Tolleson and Jake Diekman the night off after being massively overworked in the first two games of the Toronto series.

Lewis is now sporting a 3.32 ERA and is performing well beyond expectations for this year. But then again, we should all know never to limit Lewis to any kind of expectations, because he'll usually exceed them.

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