Game 95: Great Scott!

I’ve heard it said that the outcome of any given game comes down to just a handful of plays. I’ll do my best to pinpoint those plays from tonight’s 9-1 win over the Boston Red Sox.

These were the moments that mattered…

1) Hold It Right There — The Red Sox took an early 1-0 lead in the 2nd and Adrian Gonzalez had a chance to add to it an inning later. He stepped to the plate with men on the corners and two outs, but harmlessly popped Scott Feldman‘s 2-1 offering to the 1st baseman.
2) The Little Things — Texas came alive in the next half-inning after an infield single by Craig Gentry and a walk by Ian Kinsler. The walk really set up…
3) Take Two — …the double steal that put both in scoring position. From there the Rangers went: single, Boston error, double, line out, single, then two more outs. Just like that, 4 runs and the game.

Also of note…

• The very first note I made on tonight’s game was “Great 1st inning for Feldman, can he replicate?”
  It just so happened that he could and he did, pitching 7 innings of 1-run, 7-hit, 5-K, no-walk baseball. A good night to be Scott Feldman.
• The Red Sox went 0-7 with runners in scoring position and the one run came on a homerun by Jarrod Saltalamacchia. It wasn’t even a bad pitch by Feldman, Salty just went down and golfed a low fastball over the wall.
• Robbie Ross and Tanner Scheppers mopped up in the 8th and 9th, respectively. They gave up 3 hits between them, all singles.
• The three worst slumping Rangers managed to come through offensively in tonight’s game. Josh Hamilton had an RBI double and a sac-fly. Michael Young had an RBI single. Mike Napoli had a 2-run homerun (but did strikeout three times).
  It’s no coincidence that Texas scored 9 runs on a night when those three were doing damage at the plate. That’s the sort of thing we need more of down the stretch.
• Just before Napoli’s long ball, he threw out a would-be base-stealer to end the top of the 6th. I wondered at that moment whether something like that could ignite his offense. Not saying he’s back by any means or that the two things are at all related, but it was an interesting sequence of events.
• The only Ranger not to record a hit was Nelson Cruz, but he did walk twice and score once.
• In case you missed the big news of the day:
  Colby Lewis was put back on the DL and declared out for the year. The Tigers acquired Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante. The Yankees traded for Ichiro Suzuki.
  The trading deadline is a week away and things are already getting interesting. Now we wait to see what kind of noise (if any) Jon Daniels intends to make.

Martin Perez was called up this afternoon once the Lewis news broke. He will pitch tomorrow night against the Red Sox at 7:05 Arlington time on FSSW (or MLBN).

Press on, Rangers fans.

(Leave a comment or find me on Twitter @twbbg. Per usual, thanks to Baseball Reference for their invaluable resources.)