Draw.
Taijuan Walker had bedeviled the Rangers twice this season in Texas, scattering three runs in 13 innings, and then last night he retired the first four hitters he faced, but I liked how it looked. My tweet after Adrian Beltre lined out to left to open the second:
“Three balls squared up so far (all but Prince). Good sign.”
Lots of good swings in those four outs. Seemed like Texas was seeing the ball well coming out of Walker’s hand.
Afterwards:
Home run.
F-9, Kc.
Scorched single.
Hard lineout to right.
Single.
Home run.
Single.
K, 6U.
E-1.
Home run. Chasing Walker.
Texas needed every one of those six early runs, and more, as what looked at first like a comfortable win and an opportunity for the number one starter to give the high-leverage bullpenners the game off eventually turned into a late night in which Seattle had the tying run on deck for two batters in the seventh and three batters in the eighth, before Shawn Tolleson silenced the Mariners quietly in the ninth.
Houston lost, New York lost, Minnesota lost, Los Angeles lost, Cleveland lost, and Tampa Bay lost, meaning Texas gained a game on the division leader and on the Wild Card home team and on their four closest Wild Card pursuers, and that made for a crazy-great baseball day.
Those playoff odds generators now have Texas at 70.2 percent (Baseball Prospectus) and 72.7 percent (FanGraphs), with Houston in the low 90’s in both cases, and I suppose there’s algorithmic support for the gap, but the fact is Houston and Texas now have an equal number of games lost, with the Astros having 23 games left on the schedule and the Rangers 25 (hence the Rangers’ one-game deficit in the standings).
The jagged lines on the graph haven’t intersected since April 18, and they haven’t quite yet met again given the disparity in games played, but the W2 next to Texas and the L2 next to Houston means that there’s a 64 in the L column for both the Astros and Rangers, which makes me think about this
and how Chuck Morgan was on Twitter last night encouraging all of us to fill the park September 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 against Oakland, Houston, and Seattle, decked out in that third color from the bottom left (and do they still make this color? asking for a Houston friend).
Texas has won 18 of 25, as Richard Justice (MLB.com) points out, despite scoring three runs or fewer eight times — including five of the last eight — as the rotation has posted a 3.45 ERA in that stretch and the bullpen has largely been nails.
This morning on MLB Network Radio, Todd Hollandsworth said the best three rotations going right now belong to the Cubs, Dodgers, and Rangers. Steve Phillips gave the nod to the Dodgers, Rangers, and Cardinals.
Derek vs. King Felix tomorrow afternoon, but first it’s Martin Perez against Vidal Nuno tonight, when I’ve predicted that Mike Napoli will pick up eight bags, because this is pennant race baseball and I’m like a kid with a new box of crayons and more than just a little fired up. Last night was intense, even as teams ahead of the Rangers in the standings and behind them dropped, one by one, and even as Cole Hamels was staked to a 7-1 lead, because the line graph plotting Texas runs and Seattle runs started converging a little more than any of us would have liked.
But margin of victory and playoff odds and total bases don’t matter a bit at this point as long as the W’s stack up, and thank goodness I have a full day of work today or else I’d be waiting all day for first pitch, racking my brain for hours on what the difference was between sepia and raw sienna and burnt umber and mahogany and thinking back to the days when I’d wear out the midnight blue and sky blue well before any of the other 62, drawing pictures of Jim Sundberg and Fergie Jenkins and Buddy Bell in uniform and dreaming of the day when my team would get the chance to play 162+.