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Well, the good news is that the Padres scored tonight. The bad news is that Eric Lauer, Trey Wingenter, and José Castillo wasted those runs with an extremely bad inning. Eric Hosmer has finally been living up to his ads from the beginning of the season where he claimed that hitting home runs is his job, as he hit his fourth home run of September to bring in all three runs the Friars plated tonight. But it took four different pitchers to get through the sixth inning, which proved to be the team’s undoing tonight.
The Rangers got on board first tonight when Joey Gallo took Lauer yard in the second inning, but that homer was pretty irrelevant to the game as a whole. The bigger bomb came in the third inning. Wil Myers led off that frame with a walk, and Franmil Reyes put him on second with a single to left. Hunter Renfroe put Wil on third with a sacrifice fly, but Hosmer went deep to left field to plate three runs and put the Friars up by two.
That lead held until the sixth. Lauer had only thrown 80 pitches when Elvis Andrus took his 81st to center field for a single, but Andy Green yanked him in favor of Trey Wingenter. He didn’t even record an out, as his six pitch battle with Adrian Beltre ended in a walk and his replacement. José Castillo stayed in longer, and it didn’t turn out so well. Jurickson Profar loaded the bases with a single, bringing Joey Gallo to the plate looking to score some more runs. Castillo got Gallo to ground out to first for a 3-2 double play, and it looked like the good guys might hold on to the lead. But Castillo gave up back to back doubles, allowing Texas to score four runs and climb ahead of the Padres. A walk and a single put the Rangers up 6-3 and brought Robert Stock in from the bullpen, where he stemmed the bleeding far too late.
The Padres only saw three baserunners over the next four frames, and none of them advanced past first base. Jacob Nix will hopefully get some more offensive support tomorrow. He’ll take the mound at 1:10 PM, hoping to avoid a sweepl.