The Texas Rangers scored three runs but the Houston Astros scored seven runs.
While Kumar Rocker was fighting for his life early in this one, the Rangers waited until the fifth inning before reaching base for the first time against some dude who had a 5.72 ERA for the Colorado Rockies last season. By that point, it was 3-0 Astros and Texas was lucky it wasn’t much, much worse.
When Brandon Nimmo walked to lead off the top of the fifth for Texas’ first base runner, Houston had already had ten opportunities with RISP and had delivered on just one of them. That Jose Altuve RBI single in the bottom of the third ricocheted off Rocker for Houston’s only RBI base hit in their first nine chances through the game’s early innings.
The Astros didn’t need a runner in scoring position to score their next two runs as leadoff man Jeremy Pena hit a two-run home run in the bottom of the fourth with a runner on first. That two-run blast was yet another barrage from Houston that came with two outs, something they did often over the weekend. No surprise there. After all, they convincingly swept the series.
Following Nimmo’s walk a half inning later, the Rangers finally got to Houston starter Peter Lambert for a rally that produced two runs to bring Texas back in the game. Ironically the Rangers had two scoring hits in their first two at-bats with runners in scoring position. They would not collect another hit with RISP in three more opportunities, however.
They did eventually tie the game though when Nimmo hit a solo home run in the top of the seventh off Steven Okert for some lefty on lefty crime. The Rangers extended their rally in that inning with an opportunity to take the lead but Nicky Lopez struck out looking on a 3-2 pitch on a ball way out of the zone.
You’d anticipate that perhaps he would have challenged that call but Rangers catcher Elias Diaz had already wasted Texas’ two challenges trying to shepherd Rocker through his early trouble innings. Nevertheless, while Diaz had a bad game, home plate umpire Todd Tichenor was terrible. I was enjoying going through this debut ABS year without knowing the name of the day’s home plate umpire only for it to happen in the season’s most important game to date.
A half inning after Lopez’s phantom strikeout, the Astros immediately scored plenty off Texas’ dreadful bullpen to render any umpire related bellyaching moot. Cole Winn in particular was bad, allowing the eventual winning run that Tyler Alexander had put on base and then loading the bases against the bottom of Houston’s lineup to set up a golden chance for the Astros.
If you’ve observed anything from this series — or this season, really — you know how that turned out. At the very least, no one had to sweat out the final innings after Yordan Alvarez’s 87th double of the series made it 7-3. Manager Skip Schumaker even got to hit the showers early after getting ejected. If Schumaker was attempting to fire up his moribund club, it worked about as well as most of the things Skip Schumaker tries.
And so the Rangers have lost five games in a row, are 2.5 games out of first place, and have their worst mark since they were two games below .500 back on June 26.
Player of the Game: Nimmo, I guess.
Up Next: The marathon continues with Texas returning home to take on the Giants beginning tomorrow night. The Rangers haven’t listed a starting pitcher but San Francisco is expected to go with RHP Logan Webb in the opener.
The Monday evening first pitch from The Shed is scheduled for 7:05 pm CDT and you can watch it via a national telecast on ESPN.
