Rangers snap skid behind Griffin’s gem

A.J. Griffin shut down the Oakland Athletics and the Texas Rangers bullpen had a relatively smooth and uneventful night to help snap a three-game slide with a 7-0 win Monday night at Oakland Coliseum.

How Rangers pitchers fared: Griffin held the A’s to one hit, a second-inning double, and retired the last 14 batters he faced and left after six scoreless innings with a 5-0 lead. Griffin struck out eight (one shy of tying his career high) and walked one. He threw 91 pitches so it was borderline that he’d go into the seventh.

Griffin threw first-pitch strikes to 15 of 19 batters.

“It was huge to get ahead of hitters, keep them off-balance and be able to pitch my game,” he said. “I just wanted to get our guys back in the dugout and make it feel like we were at-bat the entire game.”

Alex Claudio walked a batter but induced a 4-6-3 double play for a scoreless seventh. After a single and a double with two outs against Claudio in the eighth, Jeremy Jeffress came in and induced a groundout on two pitches to end the inning and preserve the shutout. Keone Kela, recalled before the game, pitched a perfect ninth to close it out.

How Rangers hitters fared: Carlos Gomez led off with a single to left on the 10th pitch from A’s starter Jharel Cotton and scored on Nomar Mazara’s double to the left-field corner. gomez figured again in the fifth when his double to the right-center field gap scored Shin-Soo Choo and Joey Gallo, who started the inning with consecutive walks. Jurickson Profar pushed Choo and Gallo over with a sacrifice bunt. With two outs, Mike Napoli doubled to the left-field corner to score Gomez and Mazara to push the Rangers’ lead to 5-0. Mazara drove in two more with a single in the ninth after Profar and Gomez walked to start the inning.

Notable: Mazara’s steal of second base in the fifth inning was the first of his career ... Andrus’ infield single in the first was hit No. 1,282. He’s now fifth all-time in Rangers history ... It’s the first win for the Rangers when they didn’t score at least eight runs ... it’s the first time Rangers pitchers threw a shutout in 2017.

This story was originally published April 18, 2017 at 12:03 AM with the headline "Rangers snap skid behind Griffin’s gem."