Thoughts on a 6-3 Rangers win

Rangers 6, White Sox 3

• A nice little win, that was.
• Not stressful. Things seeming largely in control, even when the ChiSox took an early lead. The type of game that you sit back and watch and think, ah, yes, this is how things go with a first place team.
• Martin Perez wasn’t dominant, but he was perfectly fine. He needed just 100 pitches to go seven innings, walked just a couple of batters, though he also struck out just two batters. Only six swinging strikes which, you know, you’d like to see more swinging strikes than that, but whatevs.
• The late inning combination of Josh Sborz and Will Smith continues to click. One would not think a team with one of the best records in baseball would have a Sborz/Smith combo as its late innings go-to Plan A in a close game, but there you go, baseball is full of surprises.
• There is only one other major league player in history with an Sb name. That is Josh Sborz’s older brother Jay Sborz, who appeared in one game for the Detroit Tigers in 2010. He faced seven batters, hit two of them, and allowed five runs in 0.2 IP. That was the extent of his major league career.
• Fun fact: the Sborz brothers were each taken in the second round in the MLB Draft, 12 years apart.
• The Rangers scored their first run in the third inning. After not getting a hit their first time through the lineup, Marcus Semien singled with two outs, Corey Seager walked, and Nathaniel Lowe lofted a deep fly to left field that Andrew Benintendi saw bounce off his glove, hit the wall, and then bounce back into his glove. A ball caught on a ricochet off the wall is not an out, so Lowe had a double — the only time he actually put the ball in play, as his other three plate appearances ended in walks. Semien scored, Seager stopped at third, and Adolis Garcia struck out on a 3-2 pitch to end the inning.
• Next inning, Ezequiel Duran had a two run homer. The inning after that, Jonah Heim had a three run homer, and as he trotted around the bases made the headphones gesture that is made to signal that a replay review is being requested, a callback to the previous day’s stupid replay review that everyone has been talking about. So that was fun.
• It would have been nice if the Rangers had continued scoring one more run than they did the inning before until the game ended, but they didn’t score again the rest of the game, which was fine since the White Sox ended up only scoring three runs. We aren’t going to complain about the offense putting up “just” six runs.
• Meanwhile, the Astros won, but the Angels fell to the Dodgers 2-0, the second day in a row they lost 2-0 to their greater metropolitan area rivals. As a result, Texas is up 5.5 on the second place Astros and 6.0 on the third place Angels. I don’t know what happened with the Mariners because I don’t see a need to pay attention to them at this point.
• So things are good, yes?
• Ezequiel Duran’s home run had a 104.4 mph exit velocity. Jonah Heim’s homer was 101.4 mph off the bat. Corey Seager had a 103.1 mph groundout. Leody Taveras had a 100.8 mph lineout.
• Martin Perez topped out at 93.5 mph with his sinker, averaging 91.5 mph. Josh Sborz hit 97.6 mph with his fastball. Will Smith’s fastball reached 91.1 mph.
• And now an off day, the last one until the All Star Break.