Thoughts on a 1-0 Rangers win

Rangers 1, Rockies 0

• Baseball is back, baby.
• Coming into 2020, I think the general consensus was, if a season was played, whenever it might be, the Texas Rangers would have good pitching, particularly starting pitching, but struggle to score runs. So having a 1-0 season opener feels appropriate.
• Lance Lynn, who had one of the best seasons of any pitcher in Rangers history in 2019, got the nod for Opening Day. He had a bigger beard than last year, and may have collected the quarantine fifteen as well, but his performance was much like we saw previously. 6 IP, 0 runs, 2 hits, 9 Ks, 106 pitches.
• Lynn did have some uncharacteristic command issues, walking four and going deeper into counts than usual, but he never really was in much trouble. Trevor Story landed at third with two outs in the first via walk, steal, passed ball, but he was stranded there, and the Rockies didn’t get a runner past second base after that.
• Jesse Chavez, Jonathan Hernandez and Jose Leclerc each pitched a shutout inning. Chavez sported light locks and retired all three batters he faced. Hernandez and Leclerc both had less than stellar command, with Hernandez allowing a single and a two out walk, and Leclerc throwing six straight balls to start the ninth before fanning a pair and getting Matt Kemp to pop out to end the game.
• The new ballpark isn’t as hitter-friendly as the old one, and that might have saved Hernandez in the 8th. With David Dahl on first, Trevor Story hit a blast to left center that I thought was gone, but which was tracked down on the warning track by Danny Santana for the first out.
• Leody Taveras made his major league debut, coming into the game in center for the 9th, with Santana sliding over to left field.
• The offense did very little today. Danny Santana’s sixth inning double followed by Rougned Odor’s double produced the one run of the game. Odor also walked, Todd Frazier walked, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa tripled and walked. That was it for the bats tonight.
• The Santana double and the Odor double were the second and fourth hardest hit balls of the day, at 105.7 and 104.9, respectively. Elvis Andrus’s eighth inning line out to center was the hardest hit ball of the day, at 105.8, and Joey Gallo had pop ups that registered at 105.0 and 103.9.
• The four hardest thrown pitches of the tonight were from Jonathan Hernandez, who also had eight of the ten fastest pitches of the night, topping out at 99.3 mph. Lance Lynn hit 96.7 with a pair of pitches.
• Its just one game, of course. But it’s a win on Opening Day, and I like those.