Cal Quantrill fired 5 1/3 innings to break a personal three-game losing streak, Austin Wynns homered, and the Texas Rangers got a crucial six-game road trip off to a good start with a 4-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night in St. Petersburg, Fla.
It was Quantrill’s (4-3) first victory since June 2 at the St. Louis Cardinals, as he yielded one run on two hits with seven strikeouts and a walk.
Wynns stroked a solo shot in the top of the seventh inning. Evan Carter had two hits, a run, RBI, walk and stolen base.
Ezequiel Duran singled to stretch his hitting streak to eight games, had an RBI and a run, was hit by a pitch and stole a base.
Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero was 2-for-4 with a double, triple and an RBI. However, the Rays managed just five hits and lost for the second time in eight contests. Jonathan Aranda had two singles.
Starter Griffin Jax (6-8) went 5 2/3 innings and allowed two runs (one earned) on five hits. He fanned 10 and walked three.
In the two first-place clubs’ first meeting this season, Texas strung together singles from Carter and Jake Burger in the second inning before a throwing error on a pickoff by Jax put runners on second and third. Nicky Lopez’s sacrifice fly pushed across an unearned run for a 1-0 lead.
More base traffic in the third resulted in a sacrifice fly by Duran, but the Rays brought the infield in and tagged out Wyatt Langford in a rundown on a fielder’s choice to keep it 2-0.
Quantrill, who had lost three of four July outings, retired the first 10 hitters before Aranda singled to left in the fourth and Caminero doubled. However, the right-hander induced a 1-2-3 double play on a comebacker hit by Chandler Simpson with the bases full.
The Rays scored in the sixth on Caminero’s first triple, a sinking liner to left-center that Langford slid for, but Texas answered in the next half-inning on Wynn’s solo shot down the line in left for a 3-1 lead.
Carter added on in the eighth with an RBI single before relievers Jakob Junis and Jacob Latz (21st save) closed with scoreless frames.
