Jordan Montgomery Thrills Rangers Fans, Silences Rays in MLB Wild Card Game 1 Gem

The Texas Rangers traded for Jordan Montgomery in July.

They are surely glad they did.

Montgomery outdueled Tyler Glasnow to lead the Rangers to a 4-0 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays in Tuesday's Game 1 of the best-of-three American League Wild Card Series at Tropicana Field.

The southpaw, who has been traded twice in the last two years, turned in a brilliant performance of seven scoreless innings with five strikeouts and six hits allowed. Arguably his best moment came with his glove, as his diving catch on a bunted popup by Jose Siri with runners on the corners and one out in the second inning stymied early momentum for the Rays.

Montgomery drew rave reviews for his catch and overall performance from social media:

Texas didn't need much run support given the pitching performance, but it got some in part because of ugly fielding from the Rays. Tampa Bay finished the game with four errors, which forced Glasnow to use his strikeout prowess to pitch out of trouble a number of times.

One of those times came in the fifth inning when he allowed just one run because of a wild pitch after loading the bases with nobody out.

Yet he exited in the sixth inning with two runners on before Corey Seager singled up the middle off Chris Devenski. That alone would have been trouble for the Rays, but Siri misplayed the ball and then airmailed the throw to third, allowing two runs to score.

That made it 4-0 in favor of the Rangers, which was more than enough for Montgomery.

He escaped that second inning with his own diving play and a strikeout of Rene Pinto, worked around a runner on third in the third inning and settled in from there before handing the ball to Aroldis Chapman and José Leclerc for the final two frames.

Now his team can win the series in Game 2 on Wednesday.