The Texas Rangers scored three runs but the Houston Astros scored six runs.
The Rangers haven’t really had many bullpen meltdowns this season but they got one tonight at an inopportune moment with them leading heading into the late innings and with a chance to extend their winning streak while guaranteeing themselves no worse than a series split against Houston.
After Nathan Eovaldi tossed 5 2⁄3 scoreless, the veteran was removed after his uncharacteristic third walk of the evening. That tasked the ‘pen with holding onto a 2-0 lead for a big chunk of this game and, especially with most of the high leverage pitchers dealing with something, that proved to be far too big of an ask.
The first full inning after Eovaldi’s exit started off innocently enough with a single sandwiched between two outs off of Hoby Milner, but after an RBI double by No. 9 hitter Cam Smith made it 2-1, Bruce Bochy turned to last night’s closer Shawn Armstrong to try to get the Rangers out of the inning with the lead.
Instead, Armstrong went wild pitch, walk, walk, single to make it 3-2, and then a game-ruining three-run shot off the bat of Christian Walker to basically put this one to bed.
Of course, more perfection from a worn down and undermanned bullpen perhaps wouldn’t have been needed if the Rangers had scored more than two runs when scoring runs still mattered. Texas got the runs to take the lead with a two-out, two-run RBI single by Jonah Heim in the bottom of the second after a defensive miscue earlier in the inning by Houston.
After that, the bats did nothing for the rest of the night against Lance McCullers, who was making just his third start since the end of the 2022 season and didn’t even make it out of the first inning in his previous outing against Cincinnati.
It took until the ninth inning for the Rangers to score again — a solo home run by Josh Jung — but by then it was too little too late and the winning streak was extinguished at six in a row.
Player of the Game: I hadn’t even noticed that Cole Winn was back. The former first-rounder came on after Armstrong’s disasterpiece and pitched 2 1⁄3 innings of scoreless mop up duty.
Up Next: The Rangers and Astros play again with RHP Tyler Mahle set to make the start for Texas opposite RHP Ronel Blanco for Houston.
The Saturday evening first pitch from The Shed is scheduled for an hour earlier at 6:05 pm CT and will be back on the Rangers Sports Network.