Thoughts on a 14-1 Rangers win

Rangers 14, Mariners 1

• I guess I could just tell you to go back and read what I wrote last night, huh?
• For the second game in a row, scored in the first, made it a big lead by the middle innings, and poured on some extra runs late. And for the second game in a row, the Ranger starter made in through 7 innings while allowing just a single run.
• Today it was Lance Lynn who went 7 IP for Texas. Lynn struggled with his command early, and it looked like he was questionable to make it through five after walking three and giving up an infield single in the first two innings, running his pitch count over 50. Lynn got into his groove after that, however, allowing just 4 hits and 0 walks over the final five innings, registering a total of 9 Ks on the day. Lynn allowed the lone Mariner run in the fourth, when a Tim Beckham leadoff double was followed by a fly out and a ground out.
• Brett Martin celebrated his 24th birthday today by pitching a scoreless 8th, while Jose Leclerc, who had pitched just once in the past week, had a scoreless 9th that featured a double, a walk and a K.
• Texas got on the board in the first when Shin-Soo Choo led off the game with a single, advanced to second on Elvis Andrus’s one out single, and then scored when Hunter Pence hit a smash that was knocked down by the second baseman but not corralled,
• Four more runs came across in the third when, with one out, Rougned Odor singled, Elvis homered, Nomar Mazara singled, and Hunter Pence homered. M’s starter Erik Swanson was chased in the fifth when the inning started E-6, single, double, awful missed fly ball E-7, a sequence that brought home three runs and left Danny Santana, the beneficiary of the E-7, in third base, making it 8-1. Santana scored on a two out single by Delino DeShields to make it 9-1.
• The Rangers put up another run in the 7th on a Choo RBI single, got three more in the 8th on a Logan Forsythe three run homer, and finished the scoring with a 9th inning Choo home run off Connor Sadzeck.
• Not to take anything away from the Rangers today, but...the Mariners defense was really, really bad, There were four errors charged to Seattle today, and Beckham was initially charged with a fifth error on a bad throw, before it was changed to an infield hit, due to Beckham playing the ball so casually Santana would have been safe at first even if the throw had been accurate. Six of the 14 runs Texas scores were unearned.
• Swanson, the M’s starter, was the second piece in the Carlos Beltran trade, got sent from New York to Seattle in the James Paxton trade, and now is in the Seattle rotation. Dillon Tate, the headliner in that deal, is struggling in a relief role in AA for Baltimore. Swanson had some periods of really bad command in the strike zone, leaving pitches middle-middle, today, and Texas made him pay.
• Just a bizarre week. Texas lost five in a row, including an ugly three game sweep in Oakland, a Thursday blowout loss to Seattle that saw Taylor Hearn fail to get out of the first and had the beat writers digging out their thesauruses for synonyms for “disastrous,” and an extra innings loss on Friday. And now, Texas is back above .500, has a rested bullpen heading into a Monday off day (with another off day looming on Thursday), and is getting Drew Smyly (and maybe Ronald Guzman) back this coming weekend.
• This is a good way to end the week.