Cole Outduels Darvish As Pirates Shutout Rangers
ARLINGTON(CBSDFW.COM) -- When it comes to interleague play, no one has defeated the Rangers Yu Darvish -- that is, until Monday night.
Pirates rookie starter Gerrit Cole shutout the Rangers for seven innings, erasing an impressive performance by Darvish, as Pittsburgh defeated Texas 1-0 in Arlington.
Darvish (12-8) allowed just one run in seven innings on four hits before leaving the game with cramping symptoms in his right leg. He is expected to make his next start on Saturday.
The Rangers ace struck out six before allowing consecutive two-out doubles to former Ranger Marlon Byrd and All-Star 3B Pedro Alvarez in the seventh inning for the game's first run. The run snapped a scoreless innings streak in interleague games for Darvish at 19.2 innings.
That's all the Pirates needed.
Starting in his 16th career game, the right-handed Cole (7-7) quieted the Texas bats, allowing just three hits over seven innings while striking out a career-high nine.
"He's got really impressive stuff," said shortstop Elvis Andrus after the game. "Tonight, he didn't make any mistakes the whole game. He kept the ball right at the knee with great breaking stuff -- pretty tough. Not too much to do tonight."
Mark Melancon worked the ninth inning for his 12th save.
The loss marks the third time Darvish has found himself on the wrong side of a 1-0 loss this season. The right-hander has now received two or fewer runs of support in his last six starts (1-3).
"It's baseball. Sometimes the offense can't score a run; some days you might score 20 runs," said Darvish through an interpreter after the game. "Sometimes you might even throw a no-hitter and not win. This is what it is. The hitters -- they did their best. And today I did my best."
Darvish entered Monday's game a perfect 4-0 in five interleague starts with a 1.93 ERA.
Martin Perez (9-3) will try to win his seventh consecutive start when he takes the mound on Tuesday night against Francisco Liriano (15-7) and the Pirates.
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