Unfortunately, the Texas Rangers did not score any runs as they were shut out by the Arizona Diamondbacks 1-0.
ARLINGTON, Texas -- When Nathan Eovaldi was scratched from his scheduled Monday night start, it looked like the Texas Rangers were going to need a big offensive night to win as they were forced into a bullpen game.
It would have helped if someone told the Rangers then that they would only need two runs to come away with a victory. Unfortunately, the Rangers did not get those two runs as they were shut out 1-0 by the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The Rangers' offense was largely shut down by D-backs starter Michael Saroka, who went 6 1/3 innings, allowing just three hits and one walk while striking out five.
In the very first inning, the Rangers had their best and pretty much only chance to score. Brandon Nimmo and Ezequiel Duran singled as the first two batters of the game.
However, the Rangers stranded them both on base and never really threatened the rest of the night again.
“The last couple of days were good; today not so great,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said after the game when talking about the offense.
“A lot of balls on the ground, Soroka was good, we had a chance in the first inning, but couldn’t push a run across," Schumaker said. "After that, he retired a lot in a row with not too much else happening. Credit to Soroka, but we just couldn’t really get anything going on the offensive side in the air. We had a lot of groundballs to the pull side, which falls into their game plan.”
The D-backs' lone run came in the first inning when Jakob Junis, who got the start for the Rangers, allowed back-to-back doubles to Corbin Carroll and Geraldo Perdomo. Perdomo's double drove Carroll in and that was the only run that the D-backs needed.
After that, the Rangers' bullpen shut the D-backs' offense down for the remainder of the night.
Junis finished throwing 2 2/3 innings, allowing just one run, and Jalen Beeks threw a scoreless inning. Peyton Gray threw a very sharp 2 2/3 innings, Cole Winn had a scoreless frame, and Tyler Alexander got out of a huge bases-loaded jam en route to 1 2/3 clean innings.
“You can’t ask for anything more than what they did for us,” Schumaker said. “Putting that on them at three or four to go nine innings of one-run ball. Gray, Junis, Winn, Alexander, all of them were just outstanding…”
The one piece of good news that the Rangers were able to pull from this night was that Eovaldi will seemingly avoid an Injured List stint after Schumaker said he will be day-to-day.
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