The Texas Rangers arrived in Sacramento on Friday night to face the Athletics in a meeting of teams tied for first in the AL West. Texas came in after dropping two of three games to the Dodgers and allowing 16 runs in three days, while the Athletics returned home off a run that had seen their pitchers throw three shutouts in four games.
That pitching streak is the reason Luis Severino was expected to take the ball and try to keep it going. Over that four-game span, opposing batters hit just.164 with a.453 OPS, and the Athletics allowed only six total runs in their three shutout wins before scoring 11 in the fourth game. Severino had struck out seven batters in five innings in a 3-2 win over the Yankees last time out, a start that fit the way Oakland has been playing lately: tight on the mound, and just enough at the plate when it needs it.
The Rangers needed a cleaner night from Nathan Eovaldi, who struck out seven in six innings in a win over the Mariners, because their lineup had already taken a hit. Wyatt Langford hurt his quad on Friday and had not played since, leaving Texas to piece together offense after a trip in which it gave up 16 runs to Los Angeles. The timing mattered because both clubs entered the game with a narrow margin in the division and little room for a second straight stumble.
The Athletics have been hard to pin down on offense. They had scored 10 or more runs four times in 15 games, but they had also been held to two or fewer runs seven times in that same stretch. That kind of all-or-nothing profile has followed them through a season in which the Under had hit in 15 of their last 24 games, a stretch that backed the view that this team usually wins with run prevention first.
Krest summed it up simply: the A’s keep Rangers bats quiet. That has been the point of their recent surge, and it is what made Friday’s matchup more than just another early-season division game. The winner would leave Sacramento with a better hold on first place. The loser would be looking at an AL West race that already felt tighter than it should this early.
