Pressure seekers.
One year ago this morning, the Rangers woke to find themselves in the second Wild Card position (and as high as second place in the West) for the first time in two months, having won 17 of 23 to get there.
During that stretch, Texas had picked up Cole Hamels and Jake Diekman and Sam Dyson and Mike Napoli and Bobby Wilson and Will Venable, and was about to add Drew Stubbs.
Six days earlier, with the Rangers fourth in the Wild Card standings and third in the division, asked if he believed his club would continue its march up the standings and nail down a spot in the Wild Card Game, Jon Daniels told our group at Newberg Report Night, with six weeks to go: “Man, I think we’re going to win the division.”
He, of course, was right.
Today, the team hasn’t had to claw its way to contention. It has a 5.5-game edge on the division and on the teams chasing a Wild Card spot. The last time the Rangers didn’t lead the West was in May.
This isn’t a worry so much as an observation: Texas seems to be at its best when the pressure is dialed up.
The club has the most wins in the American League but isn’t all that good (22-26) against teams who currently have losing records.
The Rangers seem to play their best baseball in close games, evidenced less by their league-leading number of comeback wins than by that insane run differential of +1.
How a team that’s scored just one more run this season than it’s allowed, a mark that’s eighth in the AL and 15th in the Major Leagues, nonetheless has more victories than any AL club, with only one team in all of baseball having logged more wins, is difficult to fathom, or explain. The Rangers win the close ones and, from time to time, lose big.
They’re not great against subpar teams, they yield far more blowouts than they claim, and, it seems, they are at their sharpest — defensively, in their approach at the plate, in the win column — when things get tight.
It’s almost akin to a lockdown closer who isn’t at his best when handed the ball in a non-save situation.
In the last four weeks the Rangers have added Jonathan Lucroy and Carlos Beltran and Jeremy Jeffress and Lucas Harrell and Dario Alvarez, and is about to add Carlos Gomez, who in his first two AAA games has gone 4 for 9 with a double and a triple and a hit-by-pitch that I don’t believe led to any bench-clearing activity.
Gomez will be here, by all accounts, in two days, when the big Cleveland-Seattle-Houston homestand kicks off.
Big games.
Which, for this team, has proven to be a good recipe.
And of course, which bodes well for a team that hopes not only to get to October but also to hang around very deep into the month and, if necessary, into November.
But first there’s two in Cincinnati, with Derek Holland and Yu Darvish facing Dan Straily and Tim Adleman and a club that sits 26 games out of first place.
I prefer to look at this as a two-game series in hostile territory against a Reds team that has won 7 of 11, and that sends a veteran to the mound tonight who is 5-0, 2.25 since the All-Star Break in seven starts, all of which his last-place team won, and then a rookie with a sub-3.00 ERA who went five scoreless Friday against the likely playoff-bound Dodgers.
Bad team, maybe, but Cincinnati is hot right now.
Feels like that might be a good thing for this very good Rangers team that, for whatever reason, seems to rise to and play at its ceiling most reliably when the pressure is amped up.