Texas Rangers: 10-game Winning Streak Comes To An End

The Longest Win Steak in the MLB comes to an end as the Texas Rangers fall to the Detroit Tigers behind A.J. Griffin’s rough outing.

It was a rough night for the Texas Rangers as they saw their impressive win streak broken at the hands of veterans Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera. As great as their hitting has been this year, especially as of late, they’ve continued to struggle against veteran pitchers.

For instance, they managed to scrape out just one run against Felix Hernandez this year. At the time, he held an ERA of 4.09 and had allowed 15 hits through 11 innings. But the Rangers were unable to find success against him.

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Later on, they managed just one run off of Carlos Santana. Admittedly, Santana has dominated everyone he’s faced this year, not just the Rangers.

And most recently, Justin Verlander had his way with us. Verlander almost won the Cy Young award last season. (placed second in the American League) He’s struggling so far this season. Before last night’s game, Verlander was 3-3 on the season with a 4.47 ERA.

Not the best outing of his career or even this season, but it was enough to get the win. He went 7 innings deep and though he still allowed 3 runs on 4 hits, his offense gave him plenty of run support.

A.J. Griffin took the mound for the Rangers and had his roughest outing yet. This season, Griffin is known for being a streak stopper, ending three separate losing streaks. He ended yet another streak for the Rangers last night, but not in his team’s favor.

Griffin got blasted right out of the gate, allowing back-to-back-to-back home runs in the very first inning. Things didn’t get much better after that. He threw a perfect 1-2-3 second inning but got into more trouble in the third.

He gave up a pair of singles to start things off. When Cabrera hit a ground ball back to Griffin, he didn’t look Kinsler back to third long enough and he was able to make it home on the throw to first. Martinez walked to put men on first and second and Castellanos jacked the fourth home run of the game off of Griffin, this one for 3 runs. He was able to get out of the inning one batter later but the Tigers were now up 7-0.

The Rangers were never able to recover. In the fourth, they managed to get on the board thanks to a double by Mazara that scored two. Three outs in a row ended the inning but the Rangers were at least able to scratch across a pair of runs, cutting the Tigers lead to 5.

It didn’t stay that close for long. Griffin came out to pitch the fourth and gave up another two runs on a double to deep left. That was as long a leash as Bannister would give him. His statline is the ugliest all year: 3.1 IP, 9 H, 9 ER, 1 BB, 3 SO. A stinker if there ever was one.

The good news is that Bibens-Dirkx, the 32-year-old rookie, got to pitch the rest of the game and it was a beauty. In the 4.2 innings he pitched, he allowed just 1 hit. It’s been a long, arduous journey for Bibens-Dirkx and he’s thrilled to have had this kind of outing. He only recorded 2 strikeouts while walking a pair of batters but he stopped a surging offense dead in its tracks. In any case, he should keep it up.

The Rangers weren’t able to climb the way out of the hole they dug themselves but did make it slightly closer, losing 9-3, ending their league-leading 10-game win streak, and dropping their record to 23-21. Texas needs to move on and focus on their next game.

Tonight, they close out their series in Detroit, hoping to keep their series-win streak alive. Yu Darvish steps on the mound, looking to improve 5-2.

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