The Texas Rangers’ 4-2 defeat of the Kansas City Royals on Thursday at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, MO, not only won them the series, but it got them back to .500 for the first time since May 1.

The Rangers were able to hold on over the final three innings to get the win, and a lot of that stretch can be credited to left-hander Jacob Latz, who pitched two innings of shutout, no-hit baseball as the final reliever to take the mound and struck out three Royals hitters in the process.

After the game, Latz was the first player who earned the praise of manager Skip Schumaker.

"He's a stud," Schumaker told Rangers Sports Network. "He's high leverage, lefty, righty, it doesn't matter. You know, coming out of spring training, we had no idea what really this was going to look like. We knew we loved the kid and the arm, but we didn't know if it was going to be seventh inning or eighth and ninth inning now.

"And today, he had pretty much 20 pitches to work with," Schumaker added. "So we said if there's anything under 10 pitches in the first inning, we'd send him back out. Of course, he throws like seven or eight pitches and he goes back out there, but he had 20 pitches to work with. We were bringing in another pitcher and shows you what he's made of."

According to MLB.com, Latz only had to throw 15 pitches to retire the six batters he faced, and 14 of them were for strikes. Schumaker also talked about the rain delay, which pushed back the game 2.5 hours, and the challenge of producing against Royals righty Michael Wacha.

"Yeah, it was long, but I mean, you know, I think you'd rather have that than like the start and stop," Schumaker said. "And so, both starting pitchers were available, which is nice. You didn't have to bring out, take out anybody. But Wacha went seven innings.

"I mean, he was really, really good," Schumaker added. "You know, it was nice to get a couple runs early, but we would have liked to have gotten him out in the fifth inning, but he was exactly what they probably needed over there with getting seven innings worth. But we did enough to score to win the game."

The Rangers are now 34-34 after winning four-straight series. The .500 mark has evaded them, but they are no longer a losing team after Thursday. For Schumaker, a myriad of factors went into achieving their current record.

"Oh gosh, I mean, everything," Schumaker said. "I mean, it's nice to have, you know, the big boys back. It's nice to have these complimentary players on the bench do their job. And you know, some guys have really stepped up in the bullpen. [Robby] Ahlstrom was fantastic today. [Peyton] Gray has been effective up and down the bullpen. They've been really, really good.

"Our starting pitching, you know, for the most part has been really good as well," he added. "But we've had some timely hits, played small ball, we played the long ball. So, I think we're finally coming together as a team and finding different ways to win, and I think that's the biggest difference than maybe in the beginning of the year. I think it's good."

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