Rangers can’t solve Simon in one-hitter

To say the least, Alfredo Simon has traveled a winding road during his professional career, beginning with falsifying his identity and his age when signed out of the Dominican Republic.

He had the Philadelphia Phillies fooled for five years. On Thursday night, he had the Texas Rangers fooled.

The right-hander tossed a one-hitter for his first career shutout, and left-hander Martin Perez struggled with his control over five innings as the Detroit Tigers opened a four-game series against the Rangers with a 4-0 victory.

Rougned Odor had the only hit, narrowly avoiding the tag at second base for a two-out double in the fifth. Simon allowed two walks and the Tigers committed two errors, but that was it against the late-blooming journeyman.

“He threw a great game,” first baseman Mitch Moreland said. “It’s one of those games where you shake it off and come back ready tomorrow. It seemed like everything went his way, but we have to give him credit. He made his pitches all night.”

Manager Jeff Banister has seen plenty of Simon, who was an All-Star last season with Cincinnati while Banister was bench coach in Pittsburgh. Simon has changed his arm angle some, but he still attacked the strike zone and effectively changed speeds with his array of off-speed pitches.

The result was Simon (11-7) retiring 14 of the first 15 hitters before Odor’s double. The lone batter who had reached was Moreland, on an Ian Kinsler error in the second. Newcomer Will Venable followed Odor’s hit with a walk, and Shin-Soo Choo walked in the sixth and reached on an error in the ninth.

That was it from an offense that entered batting .285 in the second half, tops in the majors.

“He poured his fastball in for strikes, but his secondary stuff is really what kept our guys off balance,” Banister said. “He was able to pitch on both sides of the plate and pitch in effectively and keep our guys from leaning out over the plate.”

Perez (1-3) struggled from the outset, though he retired the first two Tigers hitters on only seven pitches and jumped ahead in the count 1-2 to Miguel Cabrera in a bid for a 1-2-3 first inning.

But Cabrera worked a walk, the first of four straight batters to reach, and Perez ended up throwing 36 pitches and allowing one run.

“Against Cabrera, I was trying to throw the perfect pitch and I couldn’t do it,” Perez said. “That’s how you learn. But you just forget about it and come back tomorrow.”

The Tigers had a similar third inning, this time loading the bases with one out before again scoring only one run.

Kinsler started the fifth with a triple to right-center field, and Cabrera followed with a single to center.

Perez needed 97 pitches in five innings, but it could have been worse. He limited the damage, but the heavy workload early took its toll.

“The situation with Martin is he couldn’t quite find the range with all his pitches,” Banister said. “He fell behind a number of guys and worked himself into some jams. You’ve got to be able to throw strikes and get ahead of these guys, and when you don’t, they make you pay.

“We still felt good even after all the traffic and limited damage, and look up and at one point we were only three runs down. We know we can come back. We just couldn’t get anything going. When we did barrel it, it was hit right at somebody.”

The Rangers have braced themselves for outings such as the one Perez had in his seventh start since coming off the disabled list after Tommy John surgery. He hadn’t reached the end of the road back despite having a 1-0 record with a 2.21 ERA in his previous three starts.

But if his Tigers start is the worst of it, the Rangers can live with that.

“There’s still a ways to go for him to lock into the strike zone and a repeatable delivery coming off the surgery,” Banister said.

The loss didn’t cost the Rangers in the American League West race, thanks to Houston losing to Tampa Bay. The Rangers remained four games behind the Astros but had the potential to slip 2 1/2 games back of the second wild card pending the outcome of the Los Angeles Angels’ late game.

This story was originally published August 20, 2015 at 11:03 PM with the headline "Rangers can’t solve Simon in one-hitter."