61-46 - Heaney harangues White Sox as Rangers grab opener 2-0

The Texas Rangers scored two runs while the Chicago White Sox were held off the board.

After unloading most of anything that wasn’t nailed down from their pitching staff, the White Sox were turning to reliever Jesse Scholtens tonight in what could have been another dreaded bullpen game. Except it was kind of worse as Scholtens was able to go six innings in 80 pitches despite pitching in relief as recently as Saturday.

The Rangers’ offense is still feeling it in the aftermath of Corey Seager and Jonah Heim hitting the IL and the lost weekend in San Diego as they mustered just a solo home run off Scholtens and another solo home run off the Chicago ‘pen.

That was one more run than they needed as a combination of a laser-focused Andrew Heaney, Josh Sborz, Aroldis Chapman, and Will Smith teamed up to two-hit Chicago with 16 strikeouts and zero walks in a swift two hours. As far as drawing it up on the pitching side, you can’t get much better than that.

Now it’s up to the bats to break out again.

In the meantime, the Rangers will not relinquish the AL West lead just yet.

Player of the Game: With Texas adding a couple of stalwarts to the rotation before the deadline, Heaney was having a bit of an audition for his spot among the starters and, while Texas still might opt to use him in short bursts, he passed the test tonight at the very least with one of his best outings as a Ranger.

Heaney went six innings and allowed just two hits with zero walks and 11 strikeouts in just 80 pitches.

Up Next: The Rangers and White Sox will play the second game of this series with RHP Dane Dunning next up for Texas opposite RHP Dylan Cease for Chicago.

The Wednesday evening first pitch from The Shed is scheduled for 7:05 pm CT and will be aired on BS Southwest.