The Texas Rangers will look to avoid being swept and keep alive their minuscule chance for an American League wild-card berth when they host the surging Miami Marlins on Sunday afternoon in the finale of a three-game series in Arlington, Texas.
The Marlins will start Eury Perez (7-5, 4.40 ERA), while Texas will go with fellow right-hander Merrill Kelly (12-8, 3.46 ERA).
Miami has taken the first two contests in this series, including a 4-3 win on Saturday in which Troy Johnston and Connor Norby had back-to-back solo home runs in the sixth inning to provide the deciding runs.
The victory was the fifth straight and the ninth in 10 games for the Marlins (75-80) and gave them their third consecutive series win.
Texas’ loss was its sixth in a row and left the Rangers with just a 0.1 percent chance of making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. The Rangers (79-76) remain five games in back of the Houston Astros and Cleveland Guardians in the race for the final AL wild-card spot with seven games to play.
“Another tough loss for us, and we just about used up any margin for error,” Texas manager Bruce Bochy said. “We will look to salvage a game on Sunday and do what we need to do to win all the rest of them to give ourselves a chance.”
Perez has a 1-2 record over his past four starts but will carry plenty of momentum into Sunday’s game after producing his best showing of the season on Tuesday. He allowed just one hit and did not walk a batter over five scoreless innings in a 6-5 road win against the Colorado Rockies.
Perez dominated before a 61-minute rain delay with the Marlins up 6-0. His 71-pitch showing was highlighted by six strikeouts.
“Eury was fantastic,” Miami manager Clayton McCullough said postgame. “The quality of his breaking stuff in this environment where spin usually doesn’t play as well was great. His ability to miss bats goes back to the strike-throwing and command, something he hadn’t been doing these past few outings.”
Perez has never faced the Rangers in his 37 MLB appearances.
Kelly gave up six runs on nine hits and a walk over three innings in his most recent start. a 6-5 loss to the Houston Astros on Tuesday. It was his worst outing since being acquired by the Rangers from the Arizona Diamondbacks at the trade deadline in July. He struck out just one batter in the loss.
Kelly is 1-1 in his three appearances in September, with a 5.74 ERA over 15 2/3 innings after winning two in a row to end August. He is 3-2 with a 4.06 ERA in four no-decisions in his nine starts for Texas.
Kelly has faced Miami six times in his career, producing a 1-3 mark with a 5.50 ERA over 34 1/3 innings. Two of those starts came this season when he was with the Diamondbacks; he was 1-1 with a 3.27 ERA.
– Field Level Media
