ARLINGTON, Texas — Derek Holland was due for a clunker.
Tuesday night against a Cleveland Indians team that had lost eight consecutive games, he delivered.
But at least he had company with the rest of the team. On a night when Holland had his shortest outing of the season (4 1/3 innings), the Rangers were held to one run by Corey Kluber, made two errors and once again had troubles on the basepaths.
When you add it all up, the final of 5-2 doesn't sound all that bad.
Unless you're Holland, who started the night by striking out the side in the first inning. That would be it for the Holland highlights, though, as the Indians ended his night by scoring three in the fifth inning and tagging him for nine hits while snapping his four-start winning streak.
"I was very disappointed with the way I performed," said Holland, who had his shortest start since Sept. 24. "It was just an overall terrible performance by me. I thought I was still making some pitches but the balls were just dropping in. Overall I didn't think I did a good job of executing."
Holland (5-3) retired just one of the seven batters he faced in the fifth inning. A throwing error by him on an errant pickoff attempt but two runners in scoring position with no outs and Drew Stubbs followed that with a two-run single. A hit batter and a Nick Swisher RBI single added another run to the scoreboard for Cleveland and after Holland walked Carlos Santana, Texas manager Ron Washington had seen enough.
Holland threw 85 pitches to get 13 outs and only 53 of those were strikes.
"He gets 31 or 32 starts and he's going to have days where it just doesn't work out," Washington said. "Tonight was one of those nights. Cleveland put some runs on the board and they swung the bats."
The Texas offense did little to help Holland. For seven innings, they did absolutely nothing as Kluber (4-4) kept the Rangers scoreless until David Murphy's run-scoring single in the eighth. All that did was keep Texas from being shut out for the fourth time this year.
The Rangers had just seven hits, hit into three double plays and had their first runner in scoring position eliminated on the bases as Leury Garcia was thrown out trying to go from second to third on a fly ball to left.
It wasn't a good night for the hitters, but the Rangers gave credit to Kluber, who came into the game with a 4.56 ERA and hadn't won a start since May 15.
"He kept the ball down," said Elvis Andrus, who had one of the hits. "He commanded the cutter and the slider pretty well today. He's just another guy we haven't faced. That's pretty tough especially when they have all their stuff working."
Holland had everything working early too. He needed just 11 pitches to get out of the first, striking out the side. But he had to escape run-scoring situations in the second and third innings. He couldn't escape in the fourth as Mark Reynolds put the Indians on the board with a liner to right that pushed across the game's first run.
It was a sign of things to come for both Holland and the Rangers.
"As a group we're just not begin consistent enough offensively," Washington said. "We'll continue to fight. We'll come around."
