Duran Breaks It Open, Rangers Roll Past Brewers 7-4
Ezequiel Duran went 2-for-5 with a home run, 3 RBI, and 2 runs scored, doing the most damage in a Texas win that wasn't as close as the final score suggests. The Rangers scored five runs in a three-inning stretch from the fifth through the seventh to turn a tight game into a comfortable road victory.
Milwaukee jumped out early, getting two runs in the first inning on back-to-back singles — Bauers singled to right to score Turang, then Chourio singled to left to score Mitchell, and just like that it was 2-0 Brewers. Texas answered quickly. Díaz hit a ground rule double in the second to score Freeman and cut the deficit to one, then Duran erased it entirely with a 410-foot home run to left center in the third to tie it at 2. The game looked like it could go either way heading into the middle innings.
Then came the fifth, and Duran again. With Langford and Seager on base, Duran laced a ground rule double that scored both of them, pushing Texas ahead 4-2. That single swing moved Milwaukee's win probability from 52% to 34% — an 18-point collapse in an instant. The Brewers never recovered. Pederson added a 380-foot solo shot to right in the sixth to make it 5-2, and the seventh turned into a full pile-on: an infield single scored Nimmo to make it 6-2, then Freeman singled to right to score Duran and push it to 7-2. Milwaukee's Gary Sanchez hit a two-run homer to center in the bottom of the seventh — 386 feet, scoring Chourio — but it was cosmetic damage at that point.
The pitching story is genuinely strange. Kumar Rocker lasted just 3.0 innings for Texas, walking four and allowing 2 earned runs, though he did punch out 7. He looks like a pitcher who got away with a shaky outing thanks to his offense bailing him out. On the Milwaukee side, Bryse Wilson was sharp in his 2.2 innings — 1 hit, 0 earned runs — but Dustin May came on and got tagged for 4 earned runs on 6 hits over 4.1 innings, and that's where the game was lost for the Brewers. Tyler Alexander threw 2.0 clean innings for Texas, allowing nothing. The story of the night was Duran, a ground rule double that broke a game open, and a Rangers offense that kept finding ways to add on when Milwaukee needed a stop.