Sears struggles to offer reply to Scherzer’s dominating start
This has been a whirlwind season for Max Scherzer. Coming off a stellar 2022 in which he helped take the New York Mets to their first playoff appearance in six seasons, the three-time Cy Young winner entered this campaign as half of a 1-2 punch with Justin Verlander poised to take New York to the promised land.
Fast forward to August, and the Mets began Wednesday 21 games back in their own division. And Scherzer? He now dons the uniform of the Texas Rangers and is in a first-place battle with former running mate Verlander, now pitching for the instate division-rival Houston Astros.
Luckily enough for Scherzer, his first road start for Texas provided some stability as he matched up against the MLBworst Oakland Athletics. The Rangers’ new ace threw seven innings of one-run baseball, striking out six en route to a 6-1 victory on Tuesday night. Scherzer’s only blemish came on a JJ Bleday homer in the fourth inning, one of just three hits Scherzer allowed.
“It’s just a typical Scherzer outing,” Oakland manager Mark Kotsay said. “He knows how to pitch, and I think that’s why he’s been so successful his career. It’s why the Rangers went out and got him, to eat innings and go out and be a bigtime performer. He showed up tonight and we got one run off
him. It takes equal performance most of the time against a guy like that, and our offense just didn’t produce.”
The 39-year-old veteran dominated the young A’s with a variety of pitches, earning strikeouts with his changeup, slider, curveball and fastball. The A’s had particular trouble against Scherzer’s slider, missing five of the 10 they swung at. The pitch generated a 35.2% whiff rate before Tuesday night, the highest of all in Scherzer’s repertoire.
In his two starts with the Rangers, Scherzer has a 2.77 ERA. He had a 4.01 mark in 19 starts for the Mets this season.
Oakland starter JP Sears put together a strong first inning on the other side, including strikeouts of All-Stars Marcus Semien and Adolis Garcia. But the A’s frontman faced adversity in the second as he allowed three straight hits to the bottom of Texas’ lineup, including an RBI single from Ezequiel Duran for the game’s first run.
Sears found himself in further trouble in the inning, as base hits from Sam Huff and Semien loaded the bases for Corey Seager. But Sears earned another strikeout of a Rangers’ All-Star to limit damage.
The lefty’s second-inning struggle is an outlier. Sears had a 1.64 ERA and 0.73 WHIP in the second frame this season, the lowest in any inning.
Sears pitched a clean inning in the third, but hit more turbulence in the fourth against the bottom of the Texas order. Doubles from Robbie Grossman and Huff plated Texas’ second run. Semien then hit a grounder that shortstop Nick Allen dove to snag, spun and threw to first, a play that the Ranger barely beat as the speedy Huff scored from second. Seager then smacked another double, bringing Semien around from first to give Texas a 4-0 lead.
“For JP tonight, he left a lot of balls middle,” Kotsay said. “Against a good hitting team, you know they’re going to take advantage of that. The message from me in the dugout was just ‘Keep your head up, keep battling and keep fighting. You’re going to have starts like this throughout the course of the season.’ But not a performance that we’ve seen out of him lately, and I’m sure one that he’s a little frustrated with as well.”
Oakland’s starter was finished following the fourth. The start tied Sears’ shortest this season, matching his June 28 outing against the Yankees. He ended his night having allowed nine hits with six strikeouts and one walk.
“I kind of put myself in a hole early in a couple innings and just didn’t execute later on to keep guys on base,” Sears said. “That fourth inning just got off to a rough start, was just making a couple of bad pitches and balls found gaps. They’re a really good hitting team that hits really well with guys on base and have great approaches. Just a pretty frustrating night in general.”
Scherzer dazzled through three, allowing just one baserunner via a first-inning walk to Zack Gelof. But in the fourth, Bleday got a high fastball from Scherzer and drove it 420 feet over the Coliseum’s center field wall. The 25-year-old now holds ownership of Scherzer’s first home run against him as a Ranger in just his second career at-bat versus the eight-time AllStar.
“He was ready for a ball up in the zone, middle away, and put a great swing on it,” Kotsay said of Bleday. “If you drive a ball out to center field, it’s a great swing. He’s been fighting himself a little bit of late without the amount of success he’s wanted.”
Adrian Martinez, recalled from Triple-A before Tuesday’s game, began well in relief of Sears. He retired six straight, striking out the side in the fifth. The success didn’t last, though, as Seager continued his impressive night with a homer over the tall wall in right center in the seventh.
An inning later, an RBI triple off Martinez by Leody Taveras finished the night’s scoring. Brock Burke threw the final two innings for Texas.
Tuesday’s was a season-best eighth straight victory for Texas and its 68th of the season, matching the team’s 2022 win total.