The Texas Rangers are in a fierce battle in the American League West with the Oakland Athletics and the team is two games behind the lead for the division and as they visit a rival in the Los Angeles Angels, the team is hoping for a sweep after winning last night and now the Rangers will throw Yu Darvish on the mound on Tuesday at Angel Stadium.
Darvish has been one of the best pitchers in baseball this season and he is 10-5 this year with a sub-3.00 ERA and he has been a strikeout machine as well, notching at least 10 in 16 starts over his past two seasons in the MLB. Darvish is 5-1 with a 3.83 ERA and 65 strikeouts in eight starts against the Angels in his career and he has won two games and gone 2-0 with a 2.45 ERA this year. Darvish did not pitch against the Angels last week and the last time he pitched against the team he struck out 11 batters and allowed zero runs.
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The Rangers will need all the help from Darvish they can get after Nelson Cruz was suspended in the Biogenesis scandal and he now will be gone for 50 games after accepting his ban. Cruz was leading the team in home runs and RBIs and following that Adrian Beltre added a home run while Elvis Andrus had two RBIs and now the team will have to make up for the 27 HRs and 76 RBIs that Cruz had. Beltre has been hot lately and is hitting over .400 over his last eight games and he has hit .366 this season against the Angels.
Mike Trout has been cold against Darvish and he will get another chance on Tuesday night. The Angels have lost two straight and eight of 11 games and the team has had a rough year with Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton and the team is 13 games out of the division, with a record that's worse than the Mariners. The Angels had high expectations this year with the new signing and now the team is already looking to next year after how rough things have been.
"We're not going to stop putting runs on the board," manager Ron Washington said. "We've got to play the same way that we've always played -- maybe with a little less power because Cruz isn't out there."