ARLINGTON -- During the course of a 162-game season, games like Monday's 13-7 loss at the hands of the Tigers are going to happen to almost every starting pitcher.
Just as the Rangers' impressive five-game winning streak on the road had been built on solid starting pitching, it was unraveled in one 3 1/3-inning, nine-run clunker turned in by Colby Lewis.
"I didn't throw the ball well," Lewis said. "I didn't do the things that I needed to do, so it didn't turn out well."
Lewis ran into trouble almost as soon as the game began. The first two batters reached on a single and a walk before Brennan Boesch slammed a 1-0 pitch into the second level in right field for a three-run homer.
After a scoreless second, Lewis again ran into trouble in the third inning, giving up another homer -- this time solo -- to Boesch, then again to Andy Dirks and Alex Avila.
"He got a lot of balls up, and their left-handers didn't miss them," said Rangers manager Ron Washington. "I thought he made a pretty good pitch to Avila, it was down, but when things aren't going your way and you make a good pitch, it gets hit too."
In games as rough as this, sometimes the most sound strategy is to keep introspection to a minimum.
"Everybody goes through it, just like I did last year in Minnesota," Lewis said. "I'm going to give it up, come back five days from now and hopefully throw the ball well, so whatever."
The final damage for Lewis was four home runs and 10 hits, raising his ERA from 3.48 to 4.37. He also snapped an 18 2/3-inning scoreless streak by Rangers pitchers, along with a three-game streak in which starters went 7 2/3 innings or more and gave up two runs or fewer.
It obscured a good night for the Rangers' offense.
"They definitely did their job tonight. They put up seven runs," Lewis said. "I didn't do my part. If I do my part, we win the ballgame. It's tough to see seven runs go to waste, but that's what happened tonight."
The Rangers scored five runs between the third and fourth innings alone, and finished that frame just down by four.
"That's what the team's going to do, we're going to battle," said second baseman Ian Kinsler, who had three hits and two RBIs, including a triple to get the Rangers on the board. "We know what Colby's capable of, and at any point he can turn it around and give us a bunch of zeroes on the board, so we know offensively that as long as we stay there and battle, we have a good opportunity to win."
But the Tigers kept on scoring, putting four more runs on the board to put the game out of reach.
"We stayed in the fight," Washington said. "We kept trying, we just couldn't stop them."
Nelson Cruz continued his hitting streak, now at 10 games, with two home runs -- the second of which registered as the fourth-longest in the history of Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.
But the most promising performance was that of Kinsler, who busted out of an ugly 1-for-22 road trip. Kinsler is now batting .327 at home, compared to .123 on the road. "I guess it's pretty unusual. They seem to fall in here, and there I can't get much," Kinsler said. "I'm just trying to get on base any way I can, and help this team try to score runs."
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