The Texas Rangers are bringing down the hammer against their in-state rivals! The Rangers have had a frustrating season so far, struggling to gain any sort of momentum. Against the Houston Astros, though, Texas turned it up a notch, finding a rhythm that they haven’t really seen all that much this season.

Joc Pederson’s three-run blast in the first capped off an incredible 8-run inning from the Rangers against the Astros. Pederson struck out in his first at-bat, but six straight hits from the Texas hitting lineup led to a five-run advantage. Once the Rangers batted around the order, Pederson took advantage of the gassed pitcher, hitting a 1-2 fastball out of the field to secure the eight-run advantage.

It would turn out that the Rangers would need all eight of those runs they got in the first inning. The Astros would continue to rack up runs throughout the game, starting with a three-run third-inning. Texas was able to answer every run with their own run, leading to a 10-7 win. However, the pitching staff’s dismal performance after being given such a big lead should be cause for concern moving forward.

With that win, the Rangers improve to 25-29 on the season. The 8-run inning comes at the heels of the Astros no-hitting Texas yesterday, where three Houston pitchers combined to completely shut out their rivals. Rangers manager Skip Schumacher had this to say after that no-hit.

“There’s no excuses when you get no-hit,” Schumaker said. “We wanted to get (Imai) in the strike zone. So we took our walks and, again, we had traffic in the first inning. We felt like we were on our way to a big inning, and we wanted to get into their bullpen early.”