ARLINGTON, Texas - Before Tuesday night's series opener against the Washington Nationals, Texas Rangers manager Skip Schumaker expressed his desire for his offense to start building bigger leads to give the pitching staff some more breathing room in games.
The Rangers certainly did that as they scored all five of their runs in the first three innings and went on earn their 11th shutout of the season, blanking the Nationals 5-0 at Globe Life Field.
Jake Burger brought home the games first run as he bounced into an RBI 6-4-3 double play to give Texas a 1-0 lead.
In the second, Justin Foscue connected on his first home run in over a month when he blasted a solo shot into the left field seats to make it 2-0 Rangers.
Texas would strike for three in the third, the first of which saw Wyatt Langford slide into home just beating a throw from Nationals third baseman Brady House, who fielded a ground ball off the bat of Brandon Nimmo with the infield in.
Just one batter later, Foscue drew a bases-loaded walk for his second RBI of the night, and Cody Freeman ripped an RBI single to make it 5-0 Rangers.
“I thought we took our walks” Schumaker said when talking about his team’s at-bats in the third inning.
“I think we didn’t try to do to much, I think sometimes we try to get too aggressive and outside of our zone and I think there’s value in putting the ball in play.”
“We’ve said it before but I thought the walks were really good," Schumaker continued. "Foscue had a really good game, I pulled him out after the fourth but he also had a really good game against the lefty but I think the walks and getting the pitch count driven up to get into their bullpen which we didn’t really do anything against but that was the goal was to get into their bullpen and we did it” Schumaker finished.
Despite getting plenty of run support, Texas starter Cal Quantrill didn’t pitch like he needed very much offense.
Quantrill fired seven shutout innings allowing just four hits while striking out five without walking a batter in his longest scoreless outing in two years.
“We’ve played a lot of tight games latley and we finally had an early lead today and it felt like an opportunity to attack and try to get deep into the game” Quantrill said. “I thought Danny [Jansen] did a great job of getting me in the zone and staying there and forcing contact."
After Quantrill, relievers Robby Ahlstrom, Jakob Junis, and Tyler Alexander combined to pitch two innings and finish the shutout.
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