Major League Baseball

RAYS 6, RNAGERS 3 Rangers' fortunes take wild turn

Published Oct. 11, 2010 10:08 p.m. ET

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ARLINGTON - The Rangers walked seven Tampa Bay Rays on Saturday. Not a single one of them scored.

The walks did the Rangers in just the same.

The first five walks jacked up Colby Lewis' pitch count and forced his early exit from the game. The sixth exposed a weak middle of a shortened Rangers bullpen. The seventh, just like the sixth, pushed a runner into scoring position and pushed suddenly wild closer Neftali Feliz over the edge.

All those walks may - may - have turned this back into a series again. The Rays' offense, which is fueled by the walk, vanished in the first two games when Cliff Lee and C.J. Wilson limited them. The offense came roaring back to life in Saturday's 6-3 win in Game 3. It was a game in which the Rangers took a 2-1 lead to the eighth.

"We do that, we disappear for a little bit, but then all of a sudden we do what we did tonight - we'll come back," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "To be in that kind of game, down like we were and to come back against that bullpen is pretty good stuff."

To do it, though, the Rays first had to get to the weak part of the bullpen. They did that by refusing to expand their strike zone, even though they had taken 10 called third strikes against Rangers starters in the first two games. They took three more in the first three innings against Lewis but remained patient.

In the fifth, that started to pay off. Lewis walked back-to-back hitters with two outs and got a bit fortunate to get out of the inning with a strikeout of Carl Crawford on a high fastball. When Lewis walked Evan Longoria to start the sixth, the Rangers turned to Derek Holland, a starter forced into bullpen duty because of health issues on the roster.

Michael Kirkman had been the Rangers' chief middle-innings lefty in September, but a period of arm fatigue toward the end of the year concerned the Rangers enough that they decided to leave him off the roster. Clay Rapada had been a plague against lefties in September, but he was left off the roster because the Rangers felt they need protection for outfielder David Murphy and his strained groin more than a third lefty.

That left Holland.

After nearly getting a double play and then getting a huge outfield assist from Nelson Cruz on a single, Holland got caught up in the excitement and walked Carlos Pena to move Dan Johnson into scoring position. It ended up smarting when the next batter, B.J. Upton, greeted Alexi Ogando with a run-scoring double.

"I was just trying to do too much," Holland said. "I was trying to be a little too perfect."

The next walk essentially broke the Rangers. Feliz entered with two outs in the eighth and the score tied at two to face No. 9 hitter Jason Bartlett. Normally, that's a spot for Darren Oliver or Frank Francisco. But Oliver had been used earlier in the game and Francisco is injured and unavailable for the series. So Feliz was pressed into business early and in an uncommon situation.

He proceeded to walk Bartlett on a full-count fastball that was well out of the zone. It was the second time in the three games that Feliz had walked the first hitter he faced. He walked the first hitter he faced just three times in 70 regular-season appearances. It also moved Pena, who had singled to second.

When Feliz failed to bury a slider to John Jaso - after catcher Bengie Molina had explicitly asked him to - the Rays' catcher singled up the middle to drive home the go-ahead run. Feliz had turned to the slider when it appeared Jaso was starting to get comfortable against a series of 96-98-mph fastballs. Molina went to the mound and implored Feliz that if he was going to throw the slider, make sure it ended up in the dirt.

It ended up in the grass. In right center field. And the go-ahead run scored.

"He throws so hard," Molina said. "Sometimes he just throws too hard. It's really hard to get the ball down in the dirt. We tried to make it chase. It just stayed up in the strike zone."

Summed up the game pretty well, too. When the Rangers needed to throw strikes, they didn't. And when they didn't, they did.

CHAT with Ryan Jones during Game 4 of the Rangers- Rays playoff series starting at 11:30 a.m. today.

SportsDayDFW.com

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