Calvin Watkins, ESPN Staff Writer 10y

Rangers don't back down to Trout

ARLINGTON, Texas -- This is what you have to handle if you're a young pitcher like Nick Martinez and a young slugger like Mike Trout: Pitching inside.

Martinez, who fell to 3-11 after the Texas Rangers' 7-3 loss to the Los Angeles Angels on Thursday night, hit Trout twice with inside fastballs.

Martinez has to establish the inside portion of the plate, if he expects to be around with this team next year, and getting in on hitters is important in his development.

"Just establishing the fastball inside and it got away from me," Martinez said.

Trout also understands the game of baseball and he didn't like it. In the three-game series, he was hit three times, all near the same spot of the left arm and he almost got popped there a fourth time.

Trout said he was fine, yet after getting plunked in the fifth inning he flipped his bat and had an exasperated look on his face.

"You go up there trying to have at-bats not thinking you're going to get hit," said Trout, who has 102 runs scored and 103 RBIs. "They're pitching inside the whole series, I understand it."

It doesn't mean you have to like it.

Later in the fifth inning, after he was hit, Trout slid hard and fast into second base as Howie Kendrick bounced into an inning-ending double play. Trout came in so fast that second baseman Rougned Odor did a split in the air as he threw the ball to first.

"I always go down there and try to break up the double play," Trout said. "If I would have broken it up there we might have scored a run."

The Angels, who lead the majors in runs scored, did that plenty this series, and the Rangers, while not trying to do anything maliciously, weren't backing down.

This is why you like to watch the Rangers on some nights. There's a fight in them. Players are at the top step into the games, the clubhouse is loose, despite the 92 losses, and everybody roots for one another.

When bench coach Bobby Jones was honored before the game with a presentation of the Bronze Star for his service in the Vietnam War, the entire team was in the dugout and on the field paying attention to the ceremony. And when Jones got back to the dugout the entire team gave him a standing ovation.

So the Rangers have this resolve about themselves right now -- no backing down regardless of who is hitting.

"I'm sure Martinez isn't trying to hit [Trout] but when your pitching inside you can't just pitch inside with reckless abandon and you have to have the command to be able to do it," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. "I don't think anybody likes it when you get hit twice. It is what it is."

In the ninth inning, Angles reliever Joe Smith hit catcher Tomas Telis on the backside, prompting plate umpire Doug Eddings to warn both benches.

"Just baseball," Telis said. "We hit a couple of guys in the series and that's part of baseball."

The warnings seemed to humor Rangers interim manager Tim Bogar because he knows Trout getting hit twice Thursday was nothing more than a young pitcher trying to get outs.

"Just baseball, just trying to pitch him," he said of the at-bats to Trout. "That's what you have to do and we just played baseball after that, and that's the way it goes."

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