Lance Lynn notches 100th career win as Texas Rangers sweep LA Angels
Lance Lynn has been among the best pitchers since baseball started its season last month. He entered Sunday’s start as the league’s ERA leader.
But the Texas Rangers haven’t provided much run support, averaging less than two runs a game in Lynn’s first three starts. That changed Sunday afternoon.
The Rangers’ offense came to life with a four-run fourth inning, then got some help with a four-base error by the Angels in the fifth inning, en route to a 7-3 victory at Globe Life Field.
All of it stacked up to Lynn winning his 100th career game and the Rangers completing a three-game sweep of the Angels.
“A win is a win, man, we’ve got three in a row,” Rangers manager Chris Woodward said. “We’ve just got to keep building off of it. It’s amazing to think three days ago, the world was ending and we were out of the playoff race. Now if the season ended today, we’re probably in the playoffs. It’s insane to think that but we’ve just got to keep going. We’ve got to keep improving, keep getting better.
“There’s a lot of good things moving forward but we still have to play better baseball.”
Lynn allowed two runs on four hits with three walks and six strikeouts over five innings. He worked out of trouble the first two innings, but then went through a stretch where he retired eight of nine batters.
The Angels scored two runs in the fifth inning on a two-out, two-run homer by Tommy La Stella. Lynn ended the inning by getting Mike Trout to pop-up.
While Lynn would have liked to go deeper in the game, the 100th win made it a memorable day. Lynn joked about a text he sent one of his close friends and former St. Louis teammate Jake Westbrook after the game. Lynn bragged about getting his 100th win at age 33 compared with Westbrook at age 36.
“Just a little fun,” Lynn said, smiling. “But I’ve been blessed to play with good teams and good organizations. I thank everybody for all 100.”
The Rangers’ offense provided much-needed support with one run in the third inning and four more in the fourth. The four-run fourth included an RBI single by Elvis Andrus, who snapped an 0-for-12 drought, and a two-run single by Shin-Soo Choo.
The Rangers added one more run in the fifth, courtesy of Angels outfielder Jo Adell. Nick Solak sent a deep fly ball to right field that Adell tracked to the warning track. What should have been a routine fly ball, though, went over the fence when Adell got turned around and the ball bounced off his glove and over the fence.
Official scorer Lary Bump ruled it a four-base error after consulting with the Elias Sports Bureau, which said it should be scored an error if the scorer deems “the play could have been made with ordinary effort.”
Woodward said the Rangers would likely appeal the decision to get it overturned to a home run. Solak agreed he should have been credited with his first homer of the season.
“Yeah, I think I deserve a home run for sure,” Solak said. “If I were a scorer, I’d always err on the side of giving guys more hits, but that’s me personally.”
Either way, it was a run for the Rangers and reminiscent of the 1993 season when then-Rangers outfielder Jose Canseco had a ball bounce off his head and over the fence on a fly ball by the Indians’ Carlos Martinez. That play was ruled a home run by Martinez.
Texas added an insurance run in the eighth when Solak doubled, advanced to third on a groundout by Andrus and scored on a wild pitch.
Texas (6-8) opens a three-game series against the Seattle Mariners on Monday night at Globe Life Field.
“Hopefully we can go on a little run,” Lynn said. “We’ve just been getting one game in a series and stuff like that. That’s not how you are going to make the playoffs. The sweep kind of rights the bad start we had.”
This story was originally published August 9, 2020 at 5:38 PM.
