Griffin’s shutout steals show from Rangers’ offense

A Texas Rangers offense that had scored nine runs in its previous four games produced five runs Tuesday before A.J. Griffin threw his first pitch.

Shin-Soo Choo started by getting hit by a Jered Weaver “fastball,” and Elvis Andrus followed with a single. Nomar Mazara laced a two-run double to the wall in right field, and Ryan Rua launched a three-run homer three batters later.

The Rangers didn’t stop scoring, either, as they piled on six more runs.

It was quite a show, a badly need one at that, and it was a show that Griffin stole.

The right-hander and San Diego native tossed a four-hit shutout in his first career start at Petco Park, and the Rangers finished an otherwise lousy road trip with an 11-0 victory over the San Diego Padres.

Pitching with a big lead put Griffin at ease, and his ability to throw his curveball for strikes and elevate his mid- to upper-80s fastball kept Padres hitters off-balance until the final out.

“I haven’t played a baseball game in San Diego in seven years,” Griffin said. “It was really cool. I had my parents and some family friends there. Our guys did a hell of a job getting out there with a good, decent lead in the first inning, and I was able to just try not to mess it up the rest of the time.”

The Rangers finished their nine-game road trip with a 3-6 record, and Griffin (4-0) was the winning pitcher for two of the wins. The shutout was the second of his career, with the first coming in 2013 with Oakland, and the first for the Rangers since Colby Lewis in 2015 against Oakland.

Griffin leads the team in wins and ERA (2.45).

“What can you say about A.J. Griffin?” manager Jeff Banister said. “A superb effort. We desperately needed a situation like this where we could give our bullpen a blow. The early-count outs gave him some range in this game. The early curveball strikes made his fastball play up.”

Just as the Rangers started with a flurry at the plate, so did Griffin on the mound. He retired the first seven Padres hitters and faced the minimum over the first three innings.

San Diego twice put two men on, in the fourth and the sixth, but Griffin maneuvered around the Padres threats. He left runners at the corners in the third by getting Ryan Schimpf on a grounder to first, and pitched around a one-out walk and single in the sixth by getting Wil Myers to bounce into a double play.

Griffin was sitting at 92 pitches when he jogged to the mound for the ninth inning, much to the delight of the many family member and friends who packed a first-level section near the Rangers’ dugout.

He tossed a perfect ninth inning on 12 pitches, and his total pitch count was one shy of the limit the Rangers had in mind for him. Austin Bibens-Dirkx was warming in the bullpen.

“I was like, ‘I’ve got this,’ ” Griffin said. “I kept the pitch count pretty low throughout the whole game. I was throwing a lot of strikes and wasn’t exerting myself. I just wanted to keep getting strikes and get outs as quick as possible.”

Rua, Joey Gallo and Robinson Chirinos connected for home runs as the Rangers snapped a three-game losing streak. Gallo hit his 11th of the season off Weaver in the third and drove in another run with a shift-beating single up the middle in the seventh.

Chirinos followed with a shot into the left-field seats.

The Rangers finished with nine hits, took seven walks and one hit batsman, and were able to string together productive at-bats for the first time since a 10-4 victory last week at Houston.

“Putting them together is necessary,” Banister said. “There were at-bats today that I thought were strung together very well. The approach was there. The more time you stay stubborn in the approach in that at-bat, it’s going to pay off. That’s the point we need to get to in our offense.”

The Rangers and Padres boarded flights for Arlington after the game for a two-game series Wednesday and Thursday at Globe Life Park. A moment of silence will be held before first pitch Wednesday for Celeste Williams, the Star-Telegram’s managing editor for Sports and Features, who passed away Monday night.

This story was originally published May 9, 2017 at 7:07 PM with the headline "Griffin’s shutout steals show from Rangers’ offense."