Seattle’s loss, combined with Houston’s win Monday, pushed the Astros back into second place.
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The long ago hope of this series having relevance in the AL West title race disappeared a month ago.
“They have a good lineup”, Seattle manager Scott Servais said of the Rangers.
“Anything you can do I can do better”.
The expected pitchers’ duel between Iwakuma and fellow countryman Yu Darvish never really developed.
With two outs in the first, Beltran, now 6-for-11 in his career off Iwakuma, hit a 2-2 pitch into the park’s home-run porch. He improved to 5-3 on the season. Seattle would be a tough team to take down across a seven game series as they have the offense to compete with the game’s best and some quality front end pitching that could decide a series with a special outing but right now they are focused on getting to that point and they have some very deep company. “Early in the game, he probably had the liveliest fastball we’ve seen out of him”. But it’s so damn amusing to see division rivals waste two generational players while the Rangers extend their best run in franchise history.
Iwakuma couldn’t match that showing. I was very impressed. Everything was sharp. Breaking ball was tight.
“I just couldn’t bring that over to the (game) in general”.
It was a shirt-soaking, hit-enduring battle for Iwakuma. He left with two on and two outs in the seventh. Iwakuma hung a slider over the middle of the plate that Beltran blasted into the upper deck in right field for solo homer.
When Iwakuma finally struck out Carlos Gomez, after an 11-pitch at-bat, it was his 40th pitch of the inning and 68th in three innings. The 27-year-old Canadian was pitching well before being sidelined with an elbow injury, giving up one run three times in four turns while registering a total of 27 strikeouts over 28 1/3 frames in that span. Paxton is 1-1 with a 3.12 ERA in five career starts against Texas, including a no-decision on June 11 in which he scattered six hits over 6 1/3 scoreless innings.Hamels followed up a 7 1/3-inning outing on August 19 at Tampa Bay in which he allowed one run and three hits while fanning out 10 with a performance against Cleveland on Thursday that saw him give up two hits and notch eight strikeouts over eight scoreless frames.
“He’s got a new catcher, and I think (Jonathan) Lucroy did a nice job with him”. He just couldn’t get the ball in the bottom of the strike zone.
Seattle ensured it wouldn’t be shutout by Darvish in the fourth inning after the Rangers took the big lead.
Texas second baseman Rougned Odor added a sacrifice fly in the fifth, driving in Adrian Beltre, who reached base on the 584th double of his career, which moved him past Robin Yount into 20th all-time. “The one who has the most innings can mess with them”.
Venditte’s outing still was considered a positive. He has 62 strikeouts in that span. LHP Jake Diekman allowed a pair of inherited runners to score and has allowed eight of 20 to score this season. “Had I kept the damage to a minimum in the third inning, we might still have been in it”. Diekman walked Robinson Cano before Keone Kela came on to face Nelson Cruz. The nine-pitch at-bat ended with Cruz swinging and missing at a curveball after fouling off four consecutive pitches.
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“We had a chance to turn it around and I wasn’t able to deliver”, Cruz said.
