Nathan Eovaldi pitched six quality innings and Kyle Higashioka hit a go-ahead home run, rallying the Texas Rangers to a 3-2 win over the struggling Seattle Mariners on Tuesday night in Arlington, Texas.<\/p>\n
Eovaldi, making his 300th career major league start, picked up his first win of the season after two losses, allowing two runs on six hits with seven strikeouts and a pair of walks.<\/p>\n
George Kirby (1-2) threw an eight-inning complete game for Seattle, which lost its fourth straight and its sixth in the last seven games.<\/p>\n
The Mariners took a quick lead against Eovaldi, who was seeking his first win and first effective start of the season as he entered with an 11.42 ERA.<\/p>\n
Eovaldi reached 1,500 career strikeouts when he got Josh Naylor swinging to end the top of the first inning but not before serving up a first-pitch leadoff home run to Seattle\u2019s Brendan Donovan to begin the game.<\/p>\n
The Mariners went up 2-0 in the top of the fifth inning on a two-out rally. A Cole Young single, Eovaldi wild pitch and Cal Raleigh\u2019s RBI single had the Mariners up two with Kirby and his 8-0 career record against the Rangers on the mound.<\/p>\n
But the Rangers were able to get to Kirby in the bottom of the fifth. Back-to-back singles for Joc Pederson and Evan Carter \u2014 with a throwing error from Donovan on the first \u2014 made it 2-1. Higashioka drilled a Kirby fastball into the seats in left field to give Texas the lead for good with a two-run homer.<\/p>\n
Kirby (1-2) needed just 90 pitches to get through eight innings, allowing three runs on six hits with four strikeouts.<\/p>\n
The Rangers got two scoreless innings of relief from left-hander Jacob Latz, who has not given up a run in five appearances this season.<\/p>\n
Jakob Junis allowed back-to-back singles to open the ninth inning, but got the next three hitters in order for his second save in as many nights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nathan Eovaldi pitched six quality innings and Kyle Higashioka hit a go-ahead home run, rallying the Texas Rangers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2393],"tags":[5,4,149,1567,69,3240],"class_list":{"0":"post-669478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas-rangers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-rangers","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-texas-rangers","13":"tag-texasrangers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116366896469237379","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}