In Arlington, Texas, on Wednesday night, the American League Central-leading Cleveland Guardians will attempt a three-game series sweep of the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers, starting with veteran right-hander Carlos Carrasco on the mound.
After agreeing to a minor league contract on February 1, 37-year-old Carrasco (2-3, 5.36 ERA) was selected for the Guardians’ spring training roster and has made two starts in which he has allowed just four earned runs in a total of 13 innings. Manager Stephen Vogt has praised him for that.
“The last few times out he’s been outstanding,” remarked Vogt. “He simply seems to be getting better and better all the time. Cookie gives us a lot of encouragement.”
In his 11 career games (nine starts), Carrasco is 4-3 with a 5.63 ERA against Texas. Arriving fresh off a Thursday 6-3 defeat to the White Sox in Chicago, he gave up three earned runs on six hits in seven innings of work. He struck out five batters without walking a batter.
The White Sox scored two unearned runs in the first inning as a result of defensive lapses, and they further scored two solo home runs in the eighth inning from Paul DeJong and Korey Lee. For Chicago’s starter Garrett Crochet, who struck out a career-high 11 batters in six shutout innings, that was more than enough offence.
Vogt described Carrasco as “unbelievably outstanding” thereafter. Seven outstanding innings were just what we needed. His only errors occurred in the seventh, and we didn’t assist ourselves early in the game. He was excellent. Simply put, there weren’t enough runs off of crochet.”
Cleveland has won both of the series’ opening two games, including the series opener on Monday, 7-0, without any issues with runs. Tuesday’s 7-4 victory came after that, highlighted by a six-run second inning that saw brothers Josh and Bo Naylor each smash a three-run home run.
“Bo with the huge double and then obviously Josh with the exclamation point,” remarked Vogt. “Great at-bats up-and-down (the lineup) the first couple of innings, and that’s what really set the tone for game.”
In the series finale, Texas will aim to end a five-game losing streak that is a season high.
For Texas, the starting pitcher is right-hander Jon Grey (1-1, 2.36 ERA), who is 0-2 with a 5.49 ERA in four career starts against Cleveland.
This season, the Rangers are just 10-11 at home.
Texas’s offence, which had only managed to score six runs in its previous four games combined, began to show some life after Tuesday’s defeat.
Adolis Garcia doubled, scored twice, and homered, despite having just one extra-base hit in his previous 14 games. The Rangers, led by Josh Smith’s RBI single in the eighth inning, overcame an early 6-0 hole with home runs from Corey Seager and Nathaniel Lowe. The game-winning runs were also on base for Texas prior to Scott Barlow’s relief strikeout of Ezequiel Duran.
Emmanuel Clase earned his 12th save after pitching a spotless ninth inning.
Texas manager Bruce Bochy stated, “I think we had better at-bats throughout the lineup.” That’s usually encouraging. The fact that they continued to fight back is encouraging. Despite having a sizable deficit, they persisted. That’s our identity. Positive aspects