Whitewash.
Four in a row at the expense of the team you were chasing, relegating them to chaser.
Twelve of 16 overall against those Astros (including seven straight), which in a way defines the current AL West standings.
Nineteen wins in the last 23 home games, an emphatic demonstration of #CastleDoctrine baseball.
Ten remaining at home for the Rangers, six away for the American’s League best road team. For the Astros: Nine home, six away for the AL’s worst road bunch.
(Evan Drellich [Houston Chronicle]: “Psychologically, this trip hurts on two levels: the road has really become a terror for [the] Astros, beyond what it was, and so have the Rangers.”)
Nine wins in 10 career decisions against Houston for Colby Lewis, Warrior-Beast.
A .500/.579/1.063 series for Prince (maybe, just maybe . . . definitely) Fielder.
Attendance in the 20k’s for the first two Rangers-Astros games, then 30k’s for the last two, and here comes the weekend.
Texas and Houston, at Minute Maid, three times, starting a week from tonight.
All three playoff odds generators have Texas as a 92.1 percent bet to reach the post-season, and somewhere between 68.9 percent and 69.5 percent to hang on in the division.
But those are all just numbers. What we’re experiencing right now isn’t mathematical as much as it is magical, a near-nightly expression of why we invest ourselves like we do.
This isn’t about numbers right now. It’s about competing and executing and chasing something relentlessly and getting the job done, with new guys stepping up night to night.
And this isn’t over. There will be disappointing and maybe ominous nights over the next two and a half weeks. But Texas has resoundingly positioned itself so that the setbacks may not be as damaging and, on the heels of the most spectacular series this club has had in a really long time, so that it will take more of those setbacks now to wreck this thing than anyone could have ever imagined in mid-March, or mid-May, or mid-July.
The numbers can be predictive, and they can be instructive, but the bottom line is in stacking up the W’s, no matter how it is that you get the job done.
The numbers, ultimately, wash out.
-5.5, -3.5, -1.5, +0.5, or +2.5.
-5.5, -3.5, -1.5, +0.5, or +2.5.
-5.5, -3.5, -1.5, +0.5, or +2.5.
-5.5, -3.5, -1.5, +0.5, or +2.5.
-5.5, -3.5, -1.5, +0.5, or +2.5.
Let’s go.