Rangers take 2 game lead over Rays
The Texas Rangers opened up a 2 game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays with a resounding 6-0 victory.
Rangers pitcher C.J. Wilson delivered 6 1/3 scoreless innings, only giving up 2 hits. Darren O’Day came in to get an out before Darren Oliver stepped in to close out the game. Wilson got inspiration from watching Cliff Lee pitch game 1, “Cliff is a better version of me. He throws a little bit harder, he’s a little bit taller, has a little bit smaller waist, so I try to follow his lead on a lot of stuff. I just watched him kind of work in and out with his fastball, and from there I was able to see which guys maybe it was necessary to go in on and which guys it wasn’t, and that had a big factor today.”
The Rangers offense had 9 hits, including home runs by Ian Kinsler and Michael Young. Young’s homer, a 3-run shot to center in the 5th inning, broke the game wide open. It was not without controversy, Young had a check-swing at 2-2 which the Rays thought should have been the 3rd strike. Rays manager Joe Maddon was ejected after arguing the call. Young said of the call, “You know what, it was 2 2, threw a good slider, kind of bit out of the zone at the last minute, I checked, if he had rung me up, I would have walked back to the dugout and focused on defense like I usually do. I got the call in my favor and just tried to lock in on the strike zone at that point.” The home run took the lead to 5-0, which was extended to 6-0 before the inning ended after Ian Kinsler got his 2nd hit of the game, scoring Vladimir Guerrero.
Tampa Bay threatened in the 7th inning, getting runners in scoring position for the only time in the game on a walk of Ben Zobrist and a double by Willy Aybar. The Rangers pitchers held and Texas never let another runner on base.
Texas manager Ron Washington is happy to be coming home for the next games but knows the work isn’t over just yet. “You know, being up 2 0 is huge, especially winning two on the road. But we still haven’t accomplished anything yet. Our goal is to get as far as we possibly can, and we’re just going to take it back to Texas and come out and try to play as hard as we can again, and after nine innings see if we’ve got the lead and got the win. But nothing is won yet. We’ve still got to go out there and play baseball. That’s a very resilient team over there. They’re not going to lay down, but we aren’t, either. So it’s nice to be going home.”
Game 3 is in Arlington on Saturday.
