It took some extra baseball, but the Rangers were able to pull off their second consecutive victory in Seattle on Friday. The slumping Rougned Odor came through for the Rangers late in the game.
Lately the Texas Rangers bullpen has been overworked, but Rangers manager Jeff Banister wanted to give them a break on Friday. Ace starter Yu Darvish was on the mound, and Banister felt he could go deep into the game and let the bullpen rest.
After Friday Darvish is still winless at Safeco Field, but he did give the Rangers everything he had. He went seven innings, allowing one run, on six hits with five strikeouts. It was exactly what Texas needed, but it took extra innings to pull out the win.
Luckily, the Rangers only had to use four relief pitchers, and that is mainly because of the outstanding performance from Tony Barnette. He went three scoreless innings and recorded two strikeouts.
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The Mariners were not as lucky as they were forced to use seven relief pitchers. They were solid, but eventually it cracked in the 13th inning when struggling Rougned Odor came to the plate with Delino DeShields on base.
Rangers fan rejoiced as Odor hit a two-run home run off rookie Emilio Pagan to give Texas the 3-1 lead in the 13th inning. It wasn’t over yet as the Rangers still had to close the game out in the bottom half of the inning.
Lefty Alex Claudio came in to shut the door in the 13th inning and succeeded. He recorded his first career save, and sent Texas fans home happy. The bullpen finally came through for the Rangers, and this will hopefully give fans some hope for the future.