6-4 - Heaney Ks the entire monarchy as Rangers wreck Royals 11-2

The Texas Rangers scored eleven runs while the Kansas City Royals scored twice.

Looks like the Rangers found the Andrew Heaney user’s manual in the glove compartment. After a struggle in his first effort as a Ranger last week, Heaney bounced back in a big way tonight.

Though it was a rocky first inning that saw Heaney allow an unearned run after the cursed right field hexed Adolis Garcia into a two-base error that should have been caught, the Oklahoma City native rediscovered the strikeout pitch that the Los Angeles Dodgers helped him find in a breakout season last year as he K’d ten in his five innings.

Heaney’s nine strikeouts in a row also broke a Rangers pitching record.

Before Heaney set a new Texas record and evened the AL record for consecutive Ks, he zoomed past Nolan Ryan for the streak of consecutive strikeouts by a starter for the Rangers.

If you erase a Ryan strikeout record from the books, you know you had a noteworthy evening.

Meanwhile, the Rangers bats that were mostly quiet over the last week or so went off for eleven runs to help Texas earn their sixth win in the season’s first ten games.

Player of the Game: It’s hard to argue with 5 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 10K from Heaney but the Rangers had a lot of good things going for them tonight.

Corey Seager and Jonah Heim each hit their first dinger of the year. Garcia hit a sixth inning grand slam to blow the game open. The relief duo of Brock Burke and Dane Dunning followed Heaney with two innings apiece of solid pitching with only a Hunter Dozier homer off Burke blemishing the bullpen.

However, Travis Jankowski deserves some recognition as he followed up his stellar day in Chicago yesterday by reaching in three of his four plate appearances, doubling, scoring twice, driving in two, and stealing his second base of the season, while playing a center field that meant Robbie Grossman didn’t have to appear in the outfield.

Up Next: We’re just hours away from deGrom day! Jacob’ll take the mound for Texas in the second game of this series opposite old friend Jordan Lyles, righties both.

Tuesday evening’s first pitch from The Shed is scheduled for 7:05 pm CT and can be viewed on BS Southwest.