Texas Rangers Beating Up on AL West
If the American League West-leading Texas Rangers are going to contend over the course of the season, winning games in division are obviously important.
And that’s exactly what the Rangers have done over the first month and change.
Texas (20-13) leads the AL West by two full games going into Monday night's series opener at the Seattle Mariners (17-17). The Rangers have already won series against the other three divisional teams – Houston Astros, Oakland Athletics and Los Angeles Angels.
Over the weekend, Texas took two of three in Anaheim. The Rangers dropped the first game in heartbreaking fashion after blowing a four-run lead late before blowing out the Angels in the last two.
Those two wins opened up the current lead for Texas in the division over second-place Los Angeles.
“After a tough loss to come back and get the series, yeah, that’s big,” manager Bruce Bochy said.
The schedule isn’t as division-heavy as years past. The Rangers play each AL West foe 13 times this season instead of 19, dropping the number of divisional games from 76 to 52.
Still, in a division to features the defending World Series champion (Astros) and a Wild Card team (Mariners), beating your rivals is huge. The Angels are also determined to make a playoff push behind Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout.
“Any road win in division is great,” Marcus Semien said. “I think that we know if we play our game, we can beat anybody. “
The Rangers were down 3-0 on Sunday before the bats woke up again. Texas won 16-8 in the rubber match after a 10-1 rout the night before.
It was the seventh comeback win of the season. The Rangers also have seven losses when leading.
“You definitely don’t take three runs in the first and say the game is over,” Semien said. “We’ve seen what’s happened this year. We’ve been up six runs and things happen. It’s hard to win a Major League game.”
The Rangers are 6-3 against the AL West going into the first game with the Mariners. Texas won each of the previous divisional series 2-1.
Completing the first swim through the AL West with a 4-0 series mark would be huge. Jon Gray (1-1, 4.40) gets the first crack for Texas, with Logan Gilbert (1-1, 4.01) going for Seattle in the 8:40 p.m. CT start at T-Mobile Park.
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