Holland shuts out the Yankees

NEW YORK — Derek Holland was so dominant, so focused, so completely and totally un-Holland like on Thursday afternoon his manager didn’t know who he was. No, really. At some point in Holland’s 2-0 two-hit shutout of a bunch of fantasy campers posing as the New York Yankees, he came back off the mound from one of his blazingly quick innings to hear Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington address him by another name.

And, no, it didn’t begin with a profanity. Which is how many of Washington’s in-game conversations with Holland have begun through the years. Most of those took place on the mound after Holland would lose a batter with two outs and let the flames of a rally begin to catch.

On Thursday, Washington never left his seat as Holland breezed through the Yankees in 92 pitches, using a wicked 94.9 mph sinker to get ahead of hitters and elevating a 94.6 mph four-seamer to keep batters guessing on location.

“He came back in one time and I don’t know what I called him, but it wasn’t Derek,” Washington said.

“Did you forget my name, already?” Holland countered.

Not likely. Not after Holland gave the Rangers what they so desperately needed: A complete game. It was the Rangers’ first complete game since July 15, 2012, when Matt Harrison beat Seattle. And it gave the overworked bullpen quartet of Robbie Ross, Neal Cotts, Tanner Scheppers and Joe Nathan their second day off in the last four.

More than that, it finished off a road trip at the homes of the two most venerable organizations in MLB history with Texas going 5-1 and re-establishing the Rangers as the sole owners of first place in the AL West. They lead Oakland by one-half game, which is a pickup of 3 games over the past 11 days in which the opponents had three of the top nine winning percentages in baseball.

“He was tremendous,” Washington said. “I said before the game, I’d like to see him go nine innings. I wish I had that kind of magic in the Power Ball. He hit his spots and he did a really good job of pitching off his fastball.”

“We just got into a rhythm, and his command was excellent,” catcher Geovany Soto said. “He had it going. He was putting the ball where he wanted to. He’d talk between innings about wanting to bury this breaking ball and he would or elevate this fastball and he would do it.”

Using the sinker, Holland got ahead of 23 of the 29 batters he faced, and that included the two legit Yankee starters in the lineup, Ichiro Suzuki and Robinson Cano. He allowed a leadoff single to Suzuki to start the game and a two-out single to Austin Romine in the third, then retired 17 of the last 18 batters he faced around a walk of Cano to start the seventh.

Holland’s shutout ranked as one for the ages in Rangers history. Since pitch counts started being tracked in 1988, only Kevin Brown, in 1990, threw a shutout on fewer pitches (79).

Brown, in 1993, was the last Ranger to throw a shutout at Yankee Stadium.