Hamilton returns, delivers another comeback win for Rangers
Josh Hamilton returned to the Texas Rangers’ lineup on Friday night.
He wasn’t exactly healthy, either.
For Hamilton, being 100 percent for a game probably won’t come until next season when he has a full off-season of managed workouts with the Rangers.
But the sore left knee that had kept him out of the past two games in Minnesota was deemed structurally sound enough for him to play after an MRI scan before Friday’s series opener against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Although still painful, Hamilton started and homered in the second inning and put the Rangers ahead for good with a sacrifice fly in the eighth to give Texas a 5-3 win over the Rays at Globe Life Park. The Rangers pulled to within 2 1/2 games of the Los Angels Angels for the second wild-card berth, one game behind the Orioles and just a half game behind the Rays.
“It has been awhile since I hit one like that. It felt good. I felt like I had some good at-bats tonight and got the barrel on the ball,” said Hamilton, who homered for the sixth time this season and first since Aug. 2. “I feel like I want to be out there for the team and the organization. I need to be out there, get at-bats and get better at the plate.”
Delino DeShields tied the game at 3-3 with his first career homer with two outs in the seventh. That set up Hamilton’s heroics in the eighth.
Adrian Beltre and Mitch Moreland both singled with one out and moved into scoring position with heady base running on Moreland’s single up the middle. Hamilton drove a high pitch from Jake McGee to deep center to score Beltre. Moreland moved up to third and later scored on Elvis Andrus’ single to make it 5-3. Shawn Tolleson pitched a scoreless ninth to earn his 22nd save.
DeShields was hit by a pitch and stole second base in the first inning and scored on Beltre’s groundout to give Texas a 1-0 lead.
Martin Perez struggled early and the Rays tied it with a run in the second. After Hamilton’s homer in the bottom of the inning, the Rays scored twice in the third to take a 3-2 lead, but Perez settled down a bit and worked out of a bases-loaded jam after two singles and a walk in the sixth to induce a groundout to end the threat. Sam Dyson pitched a scoreless seventh and eighth to set up Tolleson’s save.
Hamilton, who has only played in 37 of the Rangers’ 70 games since he rejoined the club May 25 because of injuries, has still been able to come up big in big moments. He has six game-winning RBIs, third most on the club and four times has driven in the go-ahead run in the seventh inning or later this season.
“Hamilton to come out and do what he did tonight, it’s special,” said manager Jeff Banister, who noted an extra thump in Hamilton’s pregame batting practice Friday. “Once he found out there was no real structural damage in there he said it was time to go. You could see the extra effort, you could see the edge. It’s pretty special when he’s playing with an edge. When he’s locked in and going there’s not too many players out there as special as he is.”
DeShields, known for his speed, was equally heroic for tying the game with two outs with a towering homer down the left-field line off Steven Geltz.
“The situation was everything really. To tie the game up like that. That’s one I’ll always remember,” he said. “It was a good time to get my first one. Off the bat I knew there was no doubt about it, I got my hands inside of it. The pitcher was saying it was going foul, but I knew there was no shot.”
It’s the Rangers’ second consecutive comeback win after rallying from four down Thursday at Minnesota. It’s a hallmark of the club, DeShields said.
“We get down and we show a lot of fight. We don’t just hang it up,” he said. “These close games are huge for confidence. The more games like this we can win the more confidence we can get and it could be real special.”
Stefan Stevenson
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Twitter: @StevensonFWST
This story was originally published August 14, 2015 at 11:22 PM with the headline "Hamilton returns, delivers another comeback win for Rangers."