A week ago, us Rangers fans had the somewhat comforting assurance that, regardless of whether the team made the playoffs or not, Texas would almost certainly finish the season with a winning record.
Cold
comfort, perhaps, if we are watching our home team themselves sitting at home come October, while so many other teams in this era of expanded playoffs made it to the postseason, even if for some of those clubs their postseason runs consisted of just two games. Still, a winning record is better than not having a winning record, and as someone who grew up in a time where just two of fourteen teams in each league made the playoffs and the Rangers were never one of those two, I learned to temper expectations and take my triumphs where I could, like a West Ham fan enjoying being in the upper part of the midfield or a Texas Tech fan celebrating an Alamo Bowl bid.
Alas, things can never be that simple, and while I was in trial all last week, our favorite Baseball Club used my being distracted as an excuse to shoot themselves in the dick in repeated fashion. Not only were they swept in Houston by the Hated Astros, pretty much ending their playoff hopes and prompting me to write the team’s eulogy on Friday, they then had the ignominy of being swept at home by the Miami Marlins.
This was just the third time this season the Rangers have been swept at home, if I’m counting correctly, which I acknowledge I may not be. The first time was by the Royals in June, the second by the Phillies in August, and while the Kansas City series is something I can scarce remember, the Phillies series burns bright in my mind. That was a painful sweep, made all the worse by the Rangers losing two (in crushing fashion) of three against Arizona in the series that immediately followed.
This series against Miami didn’t cause the bone-deep ache of the Philly sweep, nor the slow, sad sinking feeling of despair turning to inevitability that the series in Houston — that started just seven days ago! — had. No, the feeling was more like standing on the side of the right late at night, with Walter Sobchak suggesting a trip to the bowling alley while you’re watching nihilists motorcycle away with Walter’s dirty undies.
Miami is not a good team. They came into the series at 73-80, with a run differential that suggested that they should be a half-dozen games or so worse than that. A mirror image, in some ways, of the Rangers, who came into the series at 79-74, but with a run differential that suggested that they should be a half-dozen games or so better than that.
But the Marlins hit, just enough, and ran wild on the bases, and the Rangers, as has been the case so much this season, didn’t hit. And maybe that shouldn’t be surprising, when you look at who the Rangers were running out there.
Here’s the Rangers’ lineup from Saturday’s game, a 4-3 loss:
Joc Pederson
Cody Freeman
Alejandro Osuna
Rowdy Tellez
Kyle Higashioka
Josh Smith
Josh Jung
Ezequiel Duran
Michael Helman
You look at a lineup like that and you wonder, not how it is that the Rangers got swept, but how it is that they scored any runs at all.
Miami’s lineup on Saturday, meanwhile, included Liam Hicks and Heriberto Hernandez in the starting lineup, and the Marlins used Tyler Phillips and Ronny Hernandez out of the bullpen that day, and Derek Hill and Maximo Acosta and Jesus Tinoco have also had more than just cameo stints this year with the club, which makes it feel all the more demoralizing, like the Rangers were being beaten by a team of their cast-offs.
I think we’d all be fine to call it a season right now, figure out a way to run out the clock with the Rangers still above .500 and take that small win, such as it is, and head on into the offseason. That’s not an option, of course, and so instead the Rangers will lick their wounds today, assuming they care enough to have mental or emotional or spiritual wounds from the embarrassing week that just was and energy enough to metaphorically lick them, before hosting their final home series of the season, against a bad Minnesota Twins team that has won just five games this month, that is 20-40 in the second half, and has been playing out the string for a couple of months now.
And maybe that will give the Twins an advantage in this series. They’ve processed the grief and sadness of a season that started with hope and optimism and has ended with meaninglessness. They shipped out, literally, almost half of their team at the deadline, and those who are now wearing the uniform are guys who have either reached the acceptance stage of the process of grieving for their lost season, or who were never were part of the plans of the team that had those high hopes six months ago, and thus have nothing themselves to grieve for.
Texas, meanwhile, is rolling with players who less than a week ago were fighting for a playoff spot, who felt some degree of confidence in their ability to contend, who were dreaming of the postseason and the possibility of an improbable playoff run. Players who are, no doubt, a bit shell-shocked by this rapid, final collapse, and who may not have truly come to grips with the fact that its over.
Texas then wraps things up with a series in Cleveland, against, ironically enough, a team it seemed like the Rangers had buried back in late August, with a three game sweep in Arlington that started the Rangers’ last, desperate push that looked for a while like it may come to fruition. Cleveland is 20-7 since leaving Arlington, including winning 15 of their last 17 games to get within one game of the Detroit Tigers, a team that they were 15.5 games back of at one point this season, and 10 games back of as recently as 16 days ago.
To get to .500, the Rangers need to win two of this last six games, three of which are against a team that has had nothing to play for for some time, three of which are a against a team that likely will have everything to play for. Texas needs to win three of those games to finish above .500 for just the second time in the last nine seasons.
That’s what we have to look forward to in the final week of this season.
