33-19 - Rangers walk away without a jackpot with 3-2 finale loss to Orioles

The Texas Rangers scored twice but the Baltimore Orioles scored three times.

It’s all fun and games with house money until you can actually win and don’t. This one felt like a game that the Rangers decided that they were fine with whatever happened once they secured the series yesterday and Cody Bradford was elevated to today’s starter in new father Dane Dunning’s stead.

Three strikeouts by the bats against O’s starter Kyle Bradish in the top of the 1st, a dropped popup by Corey Seager in Baltimore’s first at-bat, and a 2-0 Orioles lead through five hitters, and you could almost just chalk it up to another game where Bradford was once again getting dunked helplessly into a tank filled with sharks.

A funny thing happened between punting and the 27th out, though. The Rangers had a chance to win this one as Bradford settled down and started putting up zeroes. Unfortunately, the bats didn’t start believing until it got into a battle of the bullpens and Texas just isn’t going to win those these days, especially when your 8th inning shutdown unit is a trio of Cole Ragans, Joe Barlow, and John King.

A more fun read is the Rangers weren’t even really trying and it still took until the detritus of a terrible Rangers bullpen in a tied game in the 8th for Baltimore to actually beat them.

Player of the Game: Even though the beginning was rocky, Bradford finished his day with a line of 5 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 5 K, 1 BB on 78 pitches. That’s would seem to be good enough to win a ball game when playing with baseball’s best offense, but the Rangers still have yet to score a run in any inning that Bradford has appeared spanning ten big league innings.

Luckily for Bradford, the Rangers did enough after he left to get him off the hook but unlucky for us, they didn’t do enough to get a win.

Up Next: The Rangers head to Detroit to begin a series against the Tigers to close out the month of May. RHP Nathan Eovaldi will make the Memorial Day start for Texas against LHP Matthew Boyd for Detroit.

Monday’s early first pitch from Comerica Park is scheduled for 12:10 pm CT and will air on BS Southwest.