Throw out the numbers.
The Texas Rangers have the lengthiest win streak in baseball, at four. But that’s a number that doesn’t really matter.
They’re now a half-game out of second place in the division, and on May 8th that doesn’t really make a difference, either.
Winning five straight on the road? A good number, but the sample size is meaningless and the point is simply that Texas managed to come back in Anaheim to avoid a sweep in that series, hammered the Astros in Houston a week later, and got things done last night in St. Petersburg. Not really mathematically significant.
Baseball math says Nick Martinez didn’t earn a win last night, but a foursome out of his pen went 4.1-1-1-1-0-7 and preserved the lead Martinez handed off, and that’s good baseball.
The three earned runs Martinez allowed breaks his personal streak of 11 straight starts of two earned runs or fewer (second longest such streak in franchise history). Disappointing mathematically, maybe, but that’s it.
Rays righthander Chris Archer came into last night’s series opener with a 1.64 ERA, fifth best in baseball and third in the AL.
The only two American Leaguers ahead of him were Houston’s Dallas Keuchel, whom the Rangers handed a no-decision to on Monday, and Martinez.
Martinez saw his ERA jump last night from 0.84 to 1.47.
But Archer’s soared from 1.64 to 2.59.
In his first five starts, Archer had issued six walks in 32.1 innings.
In last night’s, his seventh of the season, Texas worked four free passes in 3.1 Archer frames, two of which came in the second, both with the bases loaded. The Rangers forced Archer to throw 44 pitches in that four-run second inning, and seven of them came on full counts, and that may be too much math but it’s awesome.
A picture is worth a thousand math equations, and I hope you saw Neftali Feliz’s ninth. Seven sliders among his 12 pitches, and of those seven, five were strikes, three swinging. But forget the numbers: That’s the filthiest breaking ball I’ve ever seen Feliz sustain.
Texas extended one streak but broke another last night, as Texas 5, Tampa Bay 4 was the first game all year in which Martinez took the ball coming off a Rangers win.
The club is 5-0 when Martinez starts following a team loss.
And 1-0 when Martinez starts after a Rangers win.
But numbers aside, when Nick Martinez starts, Texas wins, and that’s a pretty great thing, especially when you’re talking about what amounts to the team’s eighth starter.
As for the math, the one number that has some big-picture significance this morning is 134.
That’s the number of Rangers baseball games remaining in the scheduled 162.
It doesn’t matter a whole lot that, today, there are as many teams behind Texas in the division as there are ahead (including one that’s inevitably going to start coming back to the pack), but it does make a difference that Derek and Martin and Mitch and Tanner and Ryan and Josh and Kyuji and maybe even Matt are going to be around for a bigger chunk of those 134 than they have been for the first 28.
Things are looking much better now than they did a week ago — small sample beware — but the better part of all this might be that the Rangers have avoided burying themselves at their most decimated, and if they can keep playing solid baseball as the roster starts to get reinforced, little by little, well, you don’t need to do the math to recognize that, just over a sixth into the season, it’s suddenly gotten a lot more interesting.