Gore delivers quality start, but Rangers' bats can't pick him up

ANAHEIM -- A tough road trip finally ended for the Rangers as they dropped a game in which left-hander MacKenzie Gore gave them a chance to go home on a high note.

Gore delivered one of the best starts of his season, allowing only one run and one hit with two walks in six innings, striking out seven batters in the Rangers’ 2-1 loss against the Angels on Sunday.

“I've seen a really good MacKenzie Gore this year,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said. “He's had a couple bad ones, but he's human, and you're allowed to have those. I think you're going to see more of these types of outings for the remainder of the year.”

Back-to-back walks in the third inning proved costly for Gore, as a two-out broken-bat single by Mike Trout knocked in the game-tying run. Outside of that inning, Gore didn’t allow a single baserunner the rest of his outing and struck out five of his last nine batters faced.

Gore dominated in this one by playing his curveball off his fastball. The combination of the high fastball and curveball below the zone kept hitters off balance all game, and led to him landing both pitches for a strike more than 60% of the time.

His curveball was working especially well, generating 10 whiffs on 19 swings against it. Five of Gore’s seven strikeouts came from the curveball, and they all were swinging.

“Just getting to the right part of the ball,” Gore said. “It was sharp late. That was probably the sharpest it had been in a bit.”

This comes after Gore left his last start after one inning due to lat tightness. The outing before that, he delivered eight innings of one-run ball.

“I thought my stuff was much better than it probably had been in a few weeks,” Gore said. “Just kind of built off really the last time at home. It felt good going into the one in Colorado, too.”

Offensively, there wasn’t much going right for Texas.

Jake Burger clubbed a changeup that was left down the middle over the wall in dead center to lead off the second inning, but the Rangers couldn’t figure out left-hander Reid Detmers other than that. The Rangers fell victim to the strikeout 14 times in the eight innings that Detmers pitched, and Burger’s home run was the lone baserunner they managed against him.

“It seemed like shadows in general were tough on both sides, and spin was really playing on their side and for us,” Schumaker said. “We had trouble picking up the fastball-slider combo. I mean, he didn't do anything different than we thought he was going to do. Detmers was really good, throwing a lot of strikes, and then the slider, we just couldn't pick up, and it was tough to see for us. Just tough to pick up.”

The Rangers threatened in the ninth inning with a two-out rally after Alejandro Osuna flicked a two-strike single the other way, Justin Foscue reached on an infield single and Brandon Nimmo drew a walk to load the bases for Burger.

But Burger struck out to end the inning, and the Angels proceeded to walk it off in the bottom half of the ninth.

Oswald Peraza hit a ground ball to Foscue with runners on first and second and one out, and Foscue stepped on second to start a possible inning-ending double play. But he bobbled the transfer, then threw it short of first base. Burger failed to pick the ball cleanly and then lost sight of it, allowing the winning run to score.

“I've got to come up with a pick there,” Burger said. “That's something I pride myself in, is picking up our guys when they throw a ball in the dirt. It just kind of kicked up on me. But, I've got to come up with that ball.”

“Foscue, a little bit of a bobble, but collected himself,” Schumaker said. “Made a good play up the middle. Looked like Jake might have thought it was a short hop initially and I think the ball kind of just stayed up on him. Just a tough outcome.”