With a third consecutive series win sewn up, the Texas Rangers seek a road sweep of the Kansas City Royals on Wednesday.
Texas deluged Kansas City with five runs in the sixth inning and another four in the eighth en route to a 12-2 win on Tuesday. The rout improved the Rangers to 4-1 against the Royals on the season and marked Kansas City’s eighth loss in its last nine outings.
A win Wednesday gives Texas its first sweep since opening the season with three wins over reigning National League champion Philadelphia.
Left-hander Martin Perez (2-1, 2.87 ERA) takes the mound for Texas on Wednesday. Perez scored the win his last time out, striking out four and giving up two earned runs on five hits and four walks in the Rangers’ 6-2 win at Houston on Friday.
Perez has a 5-1 record in 12 appearances against Kansas City dating back to 2013. He has posted four straight victories against the Royals, including in each of his last two starts at Kauffman Stadium — the most recent a six-inning performance with six strikeouts, seven hits and four earned runs last June 27.
Right-hander Brady Singer (1-1, 7.88) starts for the Royals. After an impressive first start to the season (one earned run on two hits with three strikeouts and three walks over five innings in an April 3 win against Toronto), Singer has struggled in his last two appearances.
Singer gave up eight hits and five earned runs over six innings April 8 at San Francisco, then took the loss on Friday with 10 hits and eight earned runs surrendered to Atlanta over five innings.
Singer is 0-2 all-time against Texas, with both starts coming in 2021.
Josh Jung rides a seven-game hitting streak into Wednesday’s finale after he went 1-for-4 on Tuesday. Jung opened the series with a three-run, first-inning homer.
On Tuesday, Jung scored after a fourth-inning walk and his first stolen base of the season.
Marcus Semien also has his own streak going into Wednesday, having homered in each of the first two games of the series and three games in a row overall to match his career-best run.
A three-run, sixth-inning shot to blow Tuesday’s contest open was Semien’s fourth of the season.
“I’m just seeing the ball well, trusting the work I’m doing in the cage, showing up confident and trying to help us win,” Semien told Bally Sports Southwest in his postgame interview on Tuesday. “Success helps you be confident.”
Semien was one of three Rangers with two hits on Tuesday, joining Ezequiel Duran and Travis Jankowski. For Jankowski, the 2-for-4 performance marked his third multiple-hit game since April 10 and improved his season batting average to .333.
A bright spot for Kansas City in Tuesday’s loss was Bobby Witt Jr.’s lead-off triple that led to a first-inning lead. Witt was hitless in the previous two outings but had a four-game multiple-hit streak — including three straight games with three hits in each — before Sunday’s loss to Atlanta.
“People don’t see the work that we’re putting in before the game, before everything,” Witt told reporters following Tuesday’s loss. “That’s what we can keep continually doing, and I think we’ve just got to keep learning.”
–Field Level Media
