ARLINGTON, Texas — Jonathan Aranda hit a three-run home run off Jacob Latz in the top of the 10th inning Saturday night, and the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Texas Rangers 6-3 at Globe Life Field.
Texas had tied it at 3 in the eighth on Evan Carter’s leadoff homer and Justin Foscue’s double. Latz took his first loss since April 10 at the Los Angeles Dodgers and fell to 3-2.
The Rangers are 70-73. They trail Houston by 3 games in the American League West and sit 2 games behind Cleveland and Toronto for the third wild card with 19 games left. Saturday was the first time Texas had lost back-to-back home games since July 4-5 against the Detroit Tigers.
Tampa Bay is 85-57, the best record in the American League. The Rays have won two straight since dropping the series opener 6-0 on Thursday and hold a four-game lead over the New York Yankees in the AL East.
Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said Latz was going to pitch the 10th even if Texas had fallen behind by a run, to hold the deficit at one against the back of the Tampa Bay bullpen.
“Jacob Latz is our best closer, best reliever, All-Star,” Schumaker said. “Just made a pitch that Aranda can hit and can handle. And unfortunately, went out of the ballpark. It’s very rare that it’s happened to him. But it’s part of the game. But that’s just a tough loss, quite honestly. We fought back against a really good pitcher. We had our chances with runners in scoring position, with our big guys up, and just couldn’t knock them in.”
How The 10th Inning Got Away From Jacob Latz
Latz was working his second inning when Taylor Walls opened the 10th with a sacrifice bunt that moved automatic runner Jorge Mateo to third base. Latz intentionally walked Yandy Díaz, and Aranda hit a 1-2 slider a Statcast-projected 409 feet to right-center field.
Between the April 10 loss and Saturday, the Rangers had gone 40-3 in Latz’s 43 appearances, according to Kennedi Landry of MLB.com. He posted a 1.76 ERA in that span with 3 wins and 28 saves.
Tyler Wells (4-2) pitched 2 scoreless innings for Tampa Bay and got the win. Since the Rays acquired him from Baltimore at the trade deadline, Wells has a 1.69 ERA with 16 strikeouts in 16 innings over 12 appearances.
Richie Palacios told Adam Berry of MLB.com that hitters take an intentional walk in front of them differently, some as motivation and some as part of the game.
“To be honest, when they put Yandy on and they intentionally walked him, I took it personally,” Aranda said through interpreter Kevin Vera, according to Berry.
Rays manager Kevin Cash said Aranda got to two strikes in a tough matchup and went down to get the slider. Cash also said the club pushed Wells further than it normally would by sending him back out for the 10th.
“He’s been huge for us and today we probably pushed him a little farther than we normally would, but we knew that this was a big opportunity, a big chance for us to win a game,” Cash told Berry. “I felt confident with him out there. The way he commands the baseball is pretty special.”
Latz said the moments feel bigger now than they did at the start of the year.
“They all sting, of course,” Latz told Landry. “Everyone feels the moments now a little bit more than at the beginning of the year. That’s just the nature of the time. For me personally, I have a new opportunity tomorrow, so try to right the ship and turn the page as quickly as we can. It sucks because we’ve been fighting hard the last couple games, especially. To be on the wrong side of things hurts. But there’s still baseball left, and we have to keep going.”
Jacob deGrom And Drew Rasmussen Trade Zeros After The Home Runs
Junior Caminero homered off Jacob deGrom in the first inning for his 38th of the season, the most in the American League. Palacios added a solo shot in the fifth, his career-high eighth. It was his second home run in two games and his third in the last four.
deGrom went 6 innings and allowed 4 hits and 2 earned runs with 1 walk and 7 strikeouts. He has allowed 10 home runs in the first inning this season, the most in the majors. His ERA across 27 first innings is 9.00. From the second inning on, it is 2.79.
Drew Rasmussen entered 14-5 with a 2.95 ERA and had won his previous seven decisions. He held Texas to 1 run on 3 hits over 7 innings with no walks and 7 strikeouts and did not get a decision. Rasmussen retired the first nine hitters he faced and stranded one-out singles in the fourth and fifth. Over his past nine starts since July 21, he has a 2.17 ERA. Joc Pederson hit a first-pitch curveball for his team-high 25th home run with one out in the sixth for the run.
Schumaker said the Rangers’ at-bats got better later in the game after Rasmussen carried a no-hitter through the early innings.
“Drew’s really good,” Schumaker explained. “He’s had a great year. He’s had a really good couple years in a row now. Fastball’s at 98 miles an hour with a really good cutter and a really good changeup. He’s got weapons to get you out. I thought we took some good at-bats a little bit later, but early on was obviously really challenging. He had a no-hitter through three, I think, and Joc finally got us on the board. Seager got a hit, and then Joc got us on the board, but he was really, really good on his game.”
“Really tough at-bats, but deGrom battled him,” Schumaker continued. “It was back and forth with two really good pitchers, kind of a pitcher’s duel towards the end. And then they added on another run. We fought back. Foscue, huge hit, huge hit. And Carter with the home run. But unfortunately, they had another home run that cost us the game.”
deGrom said Saturday was a close game the Rangers were not able to win, and that keeping a positive mindset is the job now.
“That’s the reality of it,” deGrom told Landry. “We know what our record is. We know we gotta win quite a bit. We gotta play really good baseball to get in this. I think we can do it. It’s keeping that positive mindset. Like we said, this one stings. It was a close game, and we weren’t able to win it. We gotta show up tomorrow and go from there.”
“That’s all you can do,” deGrom added. “Obviously, I’ve said it throughout the year, there’s games we wish we could have back as a whole. There’s games I wish I could have back. But reality is we’re at where we’re at, and we have to play really good baseball to end the season to have a chance.”
The Eighth Inning And Tampa Bay’s Middle Of The Order
Liam Hicks singled home Aranda in the top of the eighth for a 3-1 lead. It was Tampa Bay’s third consecutive two-out single.
Carter led off the bottom of the eighth with a home run off Kevin Kelly. With one out, Foscue doubled off Cam Booser on a liner to left-center that got between the outfielders and scored pinch-runner Cam Cauley to tie it at 3 from first base.
The Tampa Bay bullpen had a 4.56 ERA over the seven games before Saturday, with 13 earned runs allowed in 25 2/3 innings.
On Friday, Aranda doubled, homered, and drove in 2 runs in Tampa Bay’s 7-6 win, and Caminero had 2 hits and 2 RBIs. Schumaker said Texas circled Caminero and Aranda before the series as the two hitters it could not let beat it.
“Their guys in the middle of the order have hurt us this series so far,” Schumaker said. “Caminero and Aranda have done some damage against us, and we’ve got to just make sure that they’re not beating us. Beginning of the series we kind of circled them for them not to beat us, and they beat us. So we’ve got to take a look at exactly what we’re doing wrong because they’ve been slugging and doing damage in the wrong time of the game.”
Schumaker does not see a different approach for a club chasing a playoff spot than for one holding it. Texas used its best pitchers Saturday either way.
“We’re going to do whatever we can to try to get this right because time’s running out here,” Schumaker said. “We’ve got to start collecting some wins because we’re digging ourselves a little bit of a hole right now. And we’ve got to fight out of it, and there’s only one way out, and it’s to fight, and we’ve got to get going.”
Left-hander MacKenzie Gore (8-10, 4.31 ERA) starts the series finale Sunday against Rays left-hander Ian Seymour (9-6, 4.21). The two faced each other July 29 at Tropicana Field, when Gore allowed 3 runs on 3 hits over 7 innings with 9 strikeouts and no walks in a 3-0 Tampa Bay win. Seymour worked 4 2/3 innings in bulk relief that night and allowed 2 hits.
First pitch Sunday is 2:35 p.m. CT on Rangers Sports Network.
