You can’t say the Rangers aren’t making things interesting.
After being shut out Monday night, the bats came alive on Tuesday against the Miami Marlins at The Globe. Home runs make things fun and the Rangers had plenty of fun, sending a total of four baseballs into the outfield seats, two of those courtesy of Joey Gallo. When the smoke cleared, the Rangers walked away with the 10-4 win.
Texas fell behind in the first inning after Rangers lefty Cole Hamels gave up an RBI double to Christian Yelich. However, the answer was found in the second inning when Mike Napoli left no doubt and started up the Party at Napoli’s with a solo homer to left, snapping the Rangers’ 21-inning scoreless streak at The Globe in the process.
Gallo did his thing in the third when he took the first pitch of the inning and sent it to the upper deck in left to give the Rangers the lead. They tacked on a couple of more runs in that frame on a sac fly from Adrian Beltre and infield single by Jonathan Lucroy.
Then in the fourth, Gallo sent a missile that stayed inside the right field foul pole for his second homer of the night and 25th of the season, which leads the team.
“I just try to stick to my approach, my plan,” said Gallo. “Just been working really pretty hard with the coaches, everybody has and I think it’s starting to show now.”
Hamels took a 6-1 lead into the fifth before Yelich struck again, this time for a three-run homer to cut the lead to 6-4. The Rangers second ace kept the rest of the Marlins lineup in check by keep most of his pitches low. The only time he went high was to Yelich, who made the most of it. Hamels allowed four runs on six hits in six innings to move his record to 5-1 this season. He struck out five in the effort.
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The Rangers opened it up after that, scoring four runs in the bottom of the inning, highlighted by solo homer by Rougned Odor.
“The hitters, they came through and really put up some good runs,” Hamels said after the game. “That’s always kind of nice. That really elievates some of the pressure and you can kind of step back and try to get to your gameplan and try to execute.”
Texas has now won four of their last five to move the record to 49-51. They currently sit three and a half games behind the second wild card spot. When Hamels arrived in 2015, he said he believed the Rangers were a playoff team. Texas would later go on a run to win the division. Even though the division is out of sights this time around, does Hamels still have that same playoff feeling?
“Of course, this is baseball,” replied Hamels. “You see things different every year and the unexpected always happens. If you always look at it, the wild card is kind of the team that usually goes further because they are the ones that have to battle the whole year. They didn’t have things handed to them.”
Wednesday is Darvish Day and it could be the final one in Arlington. Teams are interested in the other Rangers ace in Yu Darvish and the organization could make that move since he’s a free agent at the end of the season. In fact, during the postgame show, former Rangers pitcher and current analyst Darren Oliver had the solid take, saying he felt this would be the final start at The Globe for Darvish, who’s 6-8 with a 3.44 ERA in 21 starts this season. The next few days could get very interesting as the trade deadline approaches.
The series finale is Wednesday at The Globe. First pitch is slated for 7:05 p.m.
* Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre went 0-for-3 with a sac fly in the win. He remains seven hits shy of the 3,000 career hit milestone.
