The June bounce-back begins
The Texas Rangers scored eight runs while the St. Louis Cardinals scored one run.
It’s not May anymore, St. Louis. After enjoying baseball’s best record for much of last month, the Cardinals came to Arlington and promptly lost this series as the calendar flipped to June.
For the Rangers, the June-opening victory allows them to finish their homestand even while facing a couple of bird teams with October history against Texas.
The Rangers accomplished the rubber match win by scoring a couple of runs early which allowed them to put fate in Jacob deGrom’s seasoned right hand. The veteran even had a strikeout this time — four in them, in fact — after his first ever appearance without a K in his big league career last time out.
deGrom still wasn’t quite Prime deGrom (TM) as he walked three batters but he also allowed just one run on four hits and navigated through six innings on just 81 pitches. A trio of Shawn Armstrong, Hoby Milner, and Luke Jackson handled the rest with three scoreless innings of relief while Texas was adding rare insurance in the late innings.
In total, the Rangers’ pitching staff allowed eight runs during the six-game homestand, with no more than two runs in any of them. So, yeah, that Texas went 3-3 in those games is problematic but the arms have continued to get it done and today, the bats did more than enough to complete a series win.
Player of the Game: Josh Smith had been struggling out of the leadoff spot over the last few weeks but today he went 3-for-5 and drove in four runs with some extra base pop.
Smith bookended the game with a two-out, two-run double in the second inning that opened the scoring for Texas and erased an early 1-0 lead for St. Louis. The former LSU Tiger then capped things off with a two-run home run that ended a five-run barrage from the Rangers in the eighth.
Bonus points to Marcus Semien who has seen his batting average rise above .200 (.201). The former keystone All-Star has had three quality days in a row at the dish. Today Semien collected two hits, scored two runs, and walked twice to reach in all four of his plate appearances while keying a couple of rallies from the bottom of the order.
Up Next: The Rangers have tomorrow off before beginning a three-city road trip beginning on Tuesday at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, FL.