The Texas Rangers scored three runs but the Kansas City Royals scored five runs.
At one point, as we were entering the bottom of the fifth inning of this game, the Rangers had collected eight hits and the Royals had collected zero. Man, the Rangers must have been destroying the AL’s worst team right? Well, no. Because of a bad batch of sequencing, and a dearth of extra base hits, the Rangers led only 2-0 at that point.
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Aside from a two-bagger from Ezequiel Duran in the top of the second, the other seven of Texas’ initial eight hits were singles and worse, a great majority of those came with two outs. That required the Rangers to sustain long rallies with little wiggle room, which simply didn’t manifest for the most part.
The Rangers scored their first run on their best rally of the night, but one that was ultimately wasted if the goal was to bust the game open and take a big lead. After Wyatt Langford walked to lead off the second, Duran hit his double, and then Jake Burger singled Langford home. But with two on and still no one out, the Rangers hit two ground balls in a row with the second one a double play that allowed tonight’s KC starter Stephen Kolek and the Royals to escape the inning with Texas up just 1-0.
The Rangers didn’t even need a run-scoring hit to plate their second run thanks to Evan Carter using his legs to menace Kansas City into a couple of throwing errors. After Carter singled with two outs in the top of the third, he reached second on an errant pickoff throw and then scored when KC catcher Carter Jensen threw the ball away attempting to throw Carter out on a steal attempt at third base.
However, with eight hits, the Rangers wasted plenty of chances for that elusive bases-clearing extra base hit that could have broken open the game. Turns out, they were saving them all up for the Royals. How kind. By the end of the sixth inning it was 5-2 Royals as Kansas City collected the next six hits of the game. All of them went for extra bases. All but two of those came off tonight’s starter Nathan Eovaldi who was a tad wild early with three walks but mostly cruising along.
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Ironically, Texas’ next and only other hit of the night was a triple by Joc Pederson and the Royals’ only two hits the rest of the way were a couple of singles that did no damage.
Overall, that was a pretty annoying experience and just the latest of several chances for Texas to move back to .500 that went to waste.
Player of the Game: Josh Jung and Brandon Nimmo led the way with a couple of hits apiece. All four of those hits were singles, however.
Up Next: The Rangers will resume the climb back to .500 with LHP MacKenzie Gore set to make the start for Texas opposite RHP Seth Lugo for Kansas City.
The Wednesday evening first pitch from Kauffman Stadium is again scheduled for 6:40 pm CDT and you can catch it on the Rangers Sports Network.
