The Texas Rangers really needed another big outing from young lefty Martin Perez on Tuesday night against the AL West rival Oakland A's. The night before, they needed the same from their ace, Yu Darvish, and that failed miserably.
Unfortunately for the Rangers, Perez followed suit on Tuesday as he failed to get out of the fifth inning and allowed four runs to the A's, the same team he tossed a three-hit shutout against in his previous start last week. He saw his 26-inning scoreless streak end in the first inning when he gave up a big two-run inning.
"They looked more aggressive tonight, and (a) couple of pitches (were) up," Perez told reporters following the game. "When I got the ball down, I got a couple of good outs. Tonight, it didn't happen how I wanted."
In his start against the A's last week, he got a ton of groundball outs, but that didn't happen on Tuesday. The A's obviously had a different, and better, approach against the young lefty.
"We just had to get the ball up in the zone. He's a great ground ball pitcher, he gets a lot of double plays," Derek Norris said. "He was living down there in the zone, and we weren't biting on it and he had to elevate to get the strikes. ... When he got in a situation with runners on, we cashed in some runs."
