Dane Dunning, Josh Jung Provide Huge Lift For Texas Rangers Over Royals

The Texas Rangers beat the Kansas City Royals behind huge contributions from reliever Dane Dunning and slugger Josh Jung.

In most seasons, watching ace Jacob deGrom leave a game after four hitless innings because of right wrist soreness would be troublesome.

This is a new year with new expectations for the Texas Rangers.

Even when adversity strikes like it did with deGrom, the Rangers found ways to defeat the Kansas City Royals in the series opener 4-0 on Monday.

The three-game series continues Tuesday night at 6:40 p.m. at Kauffman Stadium. Nathan Eovaldi (1-2. 6.32) goes for Texas, while Brad Keller (2-1, 2.12) starts for Kansas City.

Rangers reliever Dane Dunning was outstanding during his 4 1/3 innings Monday, as he allowed one hit, struck out five and walked one.

“(Dunning) did a great job of picking us up,” deGrom said. “Hats off to him.”

Josh Jung ripped a three-run home run in the first inning and the pitching staff did the rest.

On this particular night, it was Dunning and Jung.

It doesn’t matter that the win came against the struggling Royals. Every victory counts and when the Rangers (10-6) add up their wins at the end of the season, they’ll see that numerous players contributed to the success.

Jung’s homer came against Royals starter Jordan Lyles.

“He hung a slider and I put a good swing on it and finally made contact out front,” Jung said. “Coming in here after an emotional series at Houston, it would have been easy to have a lull. To get us going like that was huge. I felt like it helped set the tone.”

Jose Leclerc tossed the final two-thirds of an inning in the shutout.

The last time the Rangers gave up just one hit came on May 11, 2018 against the Astros.

Earlier this season, Bubba Thompson was the hero one night. Andrew Heaney had a remarkable start. Cole Ragans recently came through out of the bullpen.

This time, it was Dunning and Jung.

The result was a shutout win. And another big step on the way to larger goals in the postseason.

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