Texas Rangers score 12 runs for second straight time
By Cory Buck
The Texas Rangers appear to have the Detroit Tigers pitching figured out, at least for now. After rolling through Detroit with a 12-2 win on Saturday, the Rangers eviscerated the Tigers once more with a 12-4 victory.
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On Saturday, the pitching victim was Rick Porcello, who’d won his previous six starts. This time, the offensive explosion came against Detroit’s ace, Justin Verlander.
Now with 50 games in the books, one has to wonder if the Texas Rangers — sitting at an even .500 — are poised to use this offensive explosion as a springboard back to relevance in the AL.
It seemed for a while that Justin Verlander might be all right.
The Rangers scored early, but not often and the score was a manageable 3-2 as Verlander took the mound for the fifth inning. By the time he stepped off that mound to end the top of the fifth, the game was all but over at 8-2 Texas.
After a couple runs scored, an Alex Rios triple scored two more runs to break the game wide open to a 7-2 margin. Verlander would see one more hitter, Mitch Moreland, in the sixth inning. Moreland hit a home run to make the 9-2 in the sixth.
Everything after that was mere formality.
The Detroit Tigers fall to 28-18, but remain atop the AL Central while the Rangers sit five games behind AL West-leading Oakland.
The Tigers will get a chance for revenge on June 24th, when the teams open a three game series in Arlington.