The Rangers lost last night as Yu Darvish drops another game to the Oakland A’s. This loss drops his record against the A’s to 1-7 with a 4.73 ERA. It is becoming quite the issue. Darvish had the option of either facing the Mariners on Sunday or the A’s last night and he chose the A’s. He has a lot of bravado and pride, but this time it might have hurt him and the team. Last week in his game he had to really labor through 6 innings and tonight he couldn’t get out of the 4th. The A’s approach to facing Darvish is just to be patient and not swing at anything outside of the strike zone. That approach takes a lot of discipline and that is what the A’s have. Darvish tends to throw right on the border of being a strike and most hitters will swing, but the A’s do not. The Rangers staff and Darvish will have to figure out a way for him to have success against the A’s. The A’s look to be the Rangers top rival for the division and if Darvish cannot pitch well against the A’s it will make winning the division very difficult. They still have 15 more games against the A’s and Darvish figures to pitch in a few of them. That is the big takeaway from last night’s game was that Darvish just cannot pitch against these guys.
There were other things to this game as well. Sonny Gray was brilliant for the A’s as he pitched his first MLB complete game shutout. He bounced back from his last start against these Rangers when he gave up 3 runs in 7 innings and took his first loss of the season. Last night he only gave up 3 singles and shut the Rangers out. They did not have an answer for Gray. His fastball was constantly moving and his curveball was breaking very sharply. On this night he won in the battle of aces.
There were some positives for the Rangers. The bullpen was lights out. Aaron Poreda came in for Darvish in the 4th and finished out the inning and then Nick Martinez came in to finish out the rest of the game going 5 innings and not allowing a run. The highlight of the game had to be Leonys Martin’s double play catch and throw in the 8th inning. I have embedded it above because it was certainly the play of the game. Martin is starting to really play gold-glove level defense. His timing on the jump was perfect and his laser throw to first base was right on time. Fielder wasn’t even on the base and still had time to jump back. The only reason I can think of that he wouldn’t be on the base is that he wasn’t expecting it to come on time. He must have thought there is no way he get it back in, but Martin just threw a laser back to Fielder to get the out. It was remarkable. Outside of that though those were the only two positives to take away from this game. The A’s just came in and played better.
Today it will be Martin Perez and Scott Kazmir. Perez will carry with a 26 inning scoreless streak into the game and a streak of back-to-back shutouts. The last pitcher to throw 3 consecutive shutouts was Cliff Lee for the Phillies in 2011. The only Rangers pitcher to accomplish the feat is Charlie Hough in 1983. Perez has been pitching very well and last start really neutralized the A’s offense. He must continue to keep his pitches down and force the A’s to hit groundballs. Early on in the season Perez has been able to do that as he has forced teams into 11 double play grounders. He hopes to continue doing that and improve on his 4-0 record. Scott Kazmir also has been having success for the A’s early on this season. He is 3-0 with a 1.62 ERA. It has been a comeback season thus far for Kazmir. He once was the Tampa Bay ace before they started winning, but since then he has bounced from team to team. He has pitched for Angels, Indians, and now the A’s. It looks like from his early results that he has rediscovered that success he had early on in his career. It will be lefty vs lefty tonight as the A’s look to win the series and the Rangers look to get one back. The game starts tonight at 7:05.
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