ANAHEIM, Calif. – This is how it must be.
If the Rangers are to finish this quest and climb back into the postseason for the first time in seven years, they are going to have to do it on their own. They can’t count on help from elsewhere. Settle it in Seattle. Win once over the next four days and they are in.
On Wednesday, the Rangers moved to the precipice of the playoffs with a crisp 5-0 win over Los Angeles. Their next win, which would be their 90th, gets them at least into the dance. Seattle, which lost to Houston Wedneday, can’t win more than 89 games - and only if the Mariners sweep the Rangers. Win two and the Rangers can clinch the division over Houston, which can’t win more than 90.
Put it this way: The Rangers have a tantalizing possibility. They could potentially have champagne-soaked celebrations on back-to-back nights. Win on Thursday, they clinch at least a wild card. Then, they could rinse off and repeat with another win on Friday (or, in lieu of that, with a win in either of the final two games).
“It’s just kind of fitting,” resident philosopher Nathaniel Lowe said Wednesday. “That team and that park has given us the most trouble since I’ve started wearing this uniform. We have to finish the job there. This is beautiful.”
More on aesthetics of the playoff race in a second. But first: Irony. The team that invested $250 million on starting pitching upgrades over the winter arrived at this point on Wednesday behind seven shutout innings from the guy effectively dropped from the rotation before the spring training ever started: Dane Dunning. Dunning won his 12th game, tying Nathan Eovaldi for the staff lead. Eovaldi has a chance to win No. 13 this weekend in Seattle, but nobody will catch Dunning in innings pitched. He will lead the staff with 169.1.
Manager Bruce Bochy called Dunning the “MVP” of the pitching staff, which is saying something considering Dunning wasn’t sure he’d make the team out of spring training, behind Jacob deGrom, Eovaldi, Andrew Heaney, Martín Perez, Jon Gray and Jake Odorizzi. He didn’t move into the rotation until May.
“It just says a lot about the man,” Bochy said. “He hasn’t missed a beat, regardless of the role. You look at the MVP of this staff; he’s been that guy.”
More irony: Jose Leclerc, dumped as closer a month into the season, pitched the ninth. He didn’t get a save because the Rangers scored three runs in the top of the inning behind homers from Evan Carter and Marcus Semien. But Leclerc is proving that what goes around, comes around. He is emerging as the guy most likely to be asked to save a postseason game.
Now, about beauty and its simplicity. The season is down to four games. The Rangers finish against one of the teams chasing them in both the division and wild card races. They have a rare opportunity: They could clinch a playoff trip, celebrate and eliminate a team that had jumped ahead of them in the AL West hierarchy in one fell swoop. Among the things they could capture with a pair of wins: A first-round bye in the playoffs and home field advantage for the AL Division Series as the No. 2 seed. On the other hand, the Rangers have kinda been in this position before. See 2012, the Oakland A’s and a Josh Hamilton dropped fly ball in the sun.
The Rangers can also put more recent traumatic memories in their rear-view mirrors, as well. As the current Ranger with more game experience in a Texas uniform than anybody else, Lowe knows his history. From 2020 through 2022, the Rangers went 4-22 in Seattle. They won more often in Houston in that time. And the losses were particularly frustrating: Of the 22 losses, eight were by one run, six by two. Seattle had 23 walkoff wins in that three-year span; four of them were against the Rangers.
The Rangers changed the results earlier this year, winning two of three Seattle in May. But they were hardly convincing. Playing without Corey Seager at the time, the Rangers did win two of three. But both of those came by one run. In addition, the offense struck out 38 times and walked just twice.
They won behind strong pitching performances by Gray, Eovaldi and Dunning. The starting rotation hasn’t been as sharp since then. The Rangers will start Jordan Montgomery, acquired from St. Louis at the trade deadline, Eovaldi and Gray in the first three games. After leaving his Monday start with wrist soreness, Gray was pronounced good to go. Seattle is undecided beyond Thursday starter Logan Gilbert.
The Rangers certainly recognize the importance of their starts. They took extra steps to keep them on normal schedules. All three left Anaheim early to fly to Seattle. It’s not unusual for a starter to fly ahead of his team. Three days’ worth of starters, though? That’s a bit extreme.
“They aren’t doing us any good here,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “It just makes sense to keep them on schedules, let them travel together.”
The Rangers also got good news on Seager, who left Tuesday’s game with a bruised right forearm. He returned to the lineup on Wednesday. The bad news: Seattle is not Seager’s favorite place to hit. Maybe he doesn’t want to outshine big brother Kyle, who spent his entire career with the Mariners, but he’s just a .132 hitter in Seattle.
He can erase bad memories this weekend, by spraying champagne.
“We don’t want to back into anything,” Bochy said. “You’ve got to go out and win games to get it done. We all knew a while back the two series against them would be huge.” And they have been.”
It is all in front of the Rangers. Win and they are in.
“We’ve definitely got some momentum right now,” Marcus Semien said. “And that’s a real thing.”
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