Nick Martinez was coming off one of the best outings of his career, if not the best, in his previous outing in his hometown Miami last week. But he couldn't carry over the positive momentum in Tuesday's start in Seattle.
The rookie right-hander, who the Rangers really seem to be big on moving forward, was tagged for six hits and all five runs in the Rangers' 5-0 loss to the Mariners. He also walked four, which got him into trouble a couple of times, over his five innings of work.
"He just didn't command the baseball the way he had been earlier," Rangers manager Ron Washington told reporters. "He couldn't keep his fastball away like he wanted to, he couldn't get his breaking ball over with consistency, and he left his changeup up a lot tonight. He just didn't have his command."
In his previous outing in Miami, Martinez fanned a career-high seven batters while working that breaking ball and changeup to near-perfection throughout the night.
It's easy to see why the Rangers have some serious hopes for Martinez, who made the jump basically from Single-A to the bigs this year after making just five career starts at Double-A before he assumed Yu Darvish's spot in the Opening Day rotation after Darvish began the year on the disabled list.
