Shut Down - Texas Loses 6-0

Ricky Romero (above) pitched a complete-game shutout, striking out 12 batters for his fourth victory of the season. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press,Chris Young)

For the first time this season, the Texas Rangers (20-17) were unable to put a run on the board as Toronto Blue Jays' (22-16) starter Ricky Romero held Rangers' in check all-game long.

"He used his pitches, changed speeds, moved the ball around," said Manager Ron Washington. "We just couldn't get anything going on him."

Romero used his changeup as a strike out pitch, getting ahead in the count and putting away Rangers' hitters.

"[The changeup] has kind of a split action to it," said Michael Young, who went 1 for 4 with three strikeouts for the game. "It's not a straight change, it kind of has a little dive down in the zone. It's a good pitch, it's a plus pitch for him and you could tell he really had a lot of confidence in it."

Texas had only five hits and Romero walked only one batter for the game.

Texas starter Scott Feldman, who hasn't won a game in six straight starts, allowed five earned in 7 1-3 innings. Feldman has allowed 16 earned runs in his last three starts, as his ERA has skyrocketed to 5.89 for the season.

"I threw better than my last few," said Feldman, who is now 1-4 on the season. "Hopefully I can just build on this one and keep on rolling."

I don't quite understand what he means there, considering he gave up five earned runs on nine hits, but one thing is for certain: Feldman is going to be having nightmares about Blue Jays' third baseman Jose Bautista. Bautista hit two home runs and knocked in five of Toronto's six runs for the game.

Texas looks to avoid the sweep in the last game of the three-game set, Sunday. The game is scheduled for a 12:07 p.m. start time, just as with today's game.

Colby Lewis (3-1, 3.16 ERA) for Texas goes against Brandon Morrow (2-3, 6.69) for Toronto.

News and Notes:

• While the Rangers came into the game on a pretty good hot-streak (having won eight of 11) the Blue Jays have now won 10 of their last 13 games and are now 3.5 games behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East.
• Despite that success, if you saw today's game you saw that almost nobody was in the stands. Toronto is six games over .500, but all of the ballpark's empty blue seats make the crowd (or lack thereof) look like the inside of a smurf.
• Elvis Andrus saw his 14-game hitting streak snapped after an 0 for 4 afternoon.

(Portions of this article were taken from The Associated Press)