Pérez shows poise, grinds through five innings

ARLINGTON -- A 90-mph cutter right on the edge of the strike zone raced just past Seattle’s Eugenio Suárez for strike three, and Rangers’ starter Martín Pérez emphatically punched into his glove and circled around to shush the crowd behind the Mariners’ dugout.

Pérez noted that the gesture was to a group of fans who were chirping at him throughout the game, not the Mariners dugout.

“They were yelling at me all game,” he explained. “I was mad because we respect the fans and they don’t always respect us. There was something that happened that inning, I’ll leave it at that. They were speaking Spanish and yelling at me the whole game.”

That cutter was the last pitch of Pérez’s outing on Thursday night, one in which he wasn’t quite on his game, but still notched nine strikeouts to match his career high. Pérez pitched five innings of one-run ball and left the game with the lead at 102 pitches (59 strikes), eventually logging a no-decision after the Rangers ultimately fell, 6-5, to the Mariners at Globe Life Field.

By getting the no-decision, he remains undefeated in career-best 16 straight starts (7-0), tying Kyle Gibson in 2021 (6-0 over 16 starts) for the longest single-season unbeaten streak by any starter in Rangers history.

“They made me work a lot today,” Pérez said. “Sometimes you want to go deep and you just go five, that’s just what happened to me tonight. I wish I pitched a little bit better, but we’ll be fine. … I got a lot of strikeouts with the fastballs in and cutters away, [and] the changeups, too. As a pitcher, when you throw the pitch where you want it, you’re gonna get strikeouts. They have no choice, they have to swing when I’m throwing strikes.”

In his final start before the All-Star Game, Pérez flashed the poise that earned him a spot in the Midsummer Classic in the first place, despite the team loss and the usual length from the veteran.

He wasn’t as sharp as he has been for most of the season -- he issued four walks, three of which came in the second inning -- but he remained calm and shut the door on each potential scoring opportunity all night.

The only run Pérez surrendered was on a sinking line drive from Sam Haggerty that dropped just in front of diving center fielder Leody Taveras and trickled behind him to the warning track, giving Haggerty an inside-the-park homer.

“I guess he was just a little bit off command-wise,” manager Chris Woodward said. “He obviously threw a ton of pitches. But stuff looked good, though. He just kind of wasn't pitching on the edges and was a little bit off. So it's just that the pitch count was high, around 60 or 70 pitches through three innings. He did a decent job of getting through five, especially after the third inning. I didn't think it was gonna happen. He gave us five innings with one run. We just couldn't do anything to hold them back.”

The loss ultimately came down to another late-game bullpen collapse, which has been all too common as of late for the Rangers. Garrett Richards and Dennis Santana combined to give up five runs on five hits in the seventh and eighth innings.

It's not the first time that the bullpen has blown a lead and it won't be the last, but it’s hard to ignore how they’ve performed over the last 10 days.

Woodward noted many of the issues come down to workload. Though Pérez and Jon Gray have consistently gone deep into games, the three other spots in the rotation have been limited to five or fewer innings much of the time.

“It’s hard,” Woodward added. “It’s the middle of the season and the bullpen is looking forward to the All-Star break. We’ve used them a lot. It makes it tough when you're a little bit fatigued, and you've had a pitch for two of three days or four in five days. That's on us. We got to try to put them in the best position possible, try not to overexpose them and try to get them out of there as soon as things don't go right. They've been so good for us all year up to this point. So we just got to pick them up.”