Michael Lorenzen went seven strong innings, Wyatt Langford had a pair of RBI singles over the first three innings and the visiting Texas Rangers finished off a 3-1 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday.
Adolis Garcia had two hits with two runs as the Rangers took the deciding game of the three-game series.
Lorenzen (4-3) gave up one run on four hits with a walk and two strikeouts, lowering his ERA over his past six starts to 1.46. David Robertson and Kirby Yates (10th save) closed out the victory by throwing one scoreless inning apiece.
Andy Pages homered for the Dodgers, who lost a series for the second time in three tries and fell for the fifth time in nine games. The Dodgers scored a total of three runs over consecutive defeats to the Rangers after scoring a season-high 15 runs in a victory over Texas on Tuesday.
The Dodgers turned to right-hander Michael Grove (4-3) to open a bullpen game, and he gave up two runs on three hits in his only inning.
After Josh Smith and Garcia had consecutive one-out hits in the first inning, Nathaniel Lowe gave Texas a 1-0 lead on a run-scoring groundout. Langford followed with an RBI single to right field.
Langford was at it again in the third inning, giving the Rangers a 3-0 lead with a bloop RBI single to right against Dodgers left-hander Ryan Yarbrough.
The Dodgers finally broke through in the seventh when Pages hit a one-out home run to left field against Lorenzen. It was the seventh home run for the rookie, who was thrown out at home plate as the potential tying run to end a loss to the Rangers on Wednesday.
The Dodgers put two aboard against Robertson in the eighth inning, but for the second consecutive game, the veteran right-hander struck out Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman in succession.
The Rangers’ Corey Seager missed his second game of the series due to left hamstring tightness. The former Dodger has not played in five of the past six games.
–Field Level Media