ARLINGTON, Texas -- Josh Hamilton has two hits in the American League Division Series. Shin-Soo Choo and Prince Fielder have one hit apiece. Mitch Moreland has yet to get a hit, and Adrian Beltre has missed the last two games with a strained back.
When any lineup’s biggest bats go silent, it’s hard to win.
Toronto starter Marco Estrada befuddled the Rangers with an array of off-speed pitches Sunday night, consistently moving the ball up and down, in and out. In 6 ⅓ innings, Estrada allowed five hits and struck out four. Few hitters barreled the ball.
The Rangers might lead the ALDS two games to one, but it’s highly unlikely they’re going to win it with the heart of their lineup hitting a collective .111 with no home runs and two RBIs.
Now, the Rangers must try to find some offense against a dude whose pitches go wherever the wind takes them. Hitting knuckleball specialist R.A. Dickey, Toronto’s starter on Monday, will be quite the challenge.
The Rangers are one of those teams that loves to hit fastballs. The closer a pitcher throws to triple digits, the better for them. They tend to struggle against soft tossers such as Estrada and Los Angeles Angels veteran Jered Weaver, who hypnotized the Rangers with his quality slop twice in the last five weeks. Weaver limited the Rangers to one run and two hits in six innings last week on pitches that rarely registered more than 80 mph.
Estrada threw harder than that on Sunday, but the Rangers could never unlock his pitch sequence, which meant they had no chance. They swung at fastballs out of the zone and took breaking balls for strikes.
“Estrada’s changeup felt like it was 20 mph slower than his fastball. He was tough,” leadoff hitter Delino DeShields said. “And he pitched the big boys well, but it only takes one game for them to get it back.”
We’ll see, considering the series is three games old and the heart of the Rangers lineup has been done no damage.
Hamilton, who went 0-for-Toronto, lined a single to right in the fifth and ripped another single to right-center in the seventh.
“I just didn’t see the ball well in Toronto, and then I tried to do more than I should,” Hamilton said. “After my first at-bat I just said, ‘If the fastball beats me, then it beats me.’ I sat on the off-speed stuff and put some good swings on the ball.”
Fielder, who hit .305 with 23 homers and 98 RBIs in regular season, finally hit a ball hard in the ninth inning, lining out to center field. That was enough to give manager Jeff Banister hope that the big fella is about to find a rhythm.
“This is a guy who’s been right in the heart of everything we’ve done all year,” Banister said, his voice rising. “Do we need Prince to find the barrel? Yes. At points, he’s actually carried this club for a significant amount of time.
“What I know about guys like Prince is that for every oh-fer, they’re one more day closer to getting hot.”
The Rangers managed just five hits and went 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position. It doesn’t help that Beltre is out because his presence lengthens the lineup. Without him, Elvis Andrus bats fifth. With him, Andrus bats seventh.
Besides, Beltre was baseball’s hottest hitter -- he had 53 RBIs in his last 48 games -- when he strained his back sliding into second base in the first inning of Game 1. He left the game prior to the start of the third inning, and remains day-to-day.
“We feel like if Adrian comes in and says he’s ready to go, then he’s ready to go and he’ll be in the lineup,” Banister said. “If not, then we’ll post up with the players we have available to us and we’ll play a game of baseball at the level we typically play.”
Of course, that’s a lot easier to do when the Rangers’ best hitters are pulverizing baseballs.