Ending Playoff Drought, Seeding at Play for Texas Rangers
Now that the trade deadline has past, talk inevitably ramps up about the postseason. Contenders are jockeying for position with seven weeks left in the regular season.
The Texas Rangers are holding on to a lead in the American League West and playing some of their best baseball of the season post-trade deadline, despite a series of injuries. The Rangers currently have a trio of All-Stars – Nathan Eovaldi, Jonah Heim and Josh Jung – on the injured list, but are 9-1 this month.
MLB.com has put together a list of eight storylines to follow during this postseason chase. The Rangers, naturally, are mentioned.
The first tackles the Rangers and Baltimore Orioles trying to end their playoff droughts (six years for Texas) and win their respective divisions.
Per MLB.com:
Two of the six teams with the longest timespan since they reached the postseason are currently in first place: The Orioles and the Rangers, neither of whom has made the playoffs since 2016. (The Tigers and Angels currently own the longest droughts, having not made it since 2014.)
Chris Tillman started Baltimore’s most recent postseason game, while Colby Lewis got the ball for Texas. It has been a while! Both teams are well-positioned to reach the postseason, but, even better, they’re also the favorites to earn the top two seeds in the American League. That’s one way to end a skid: By getting a first-round bye.
The Rangers are brought up again when asking how AL seeding will shake out.
No offense to the Twins, but they’re almost certainly going to have the worst record of any AL playoff team, and they don’t have the sort of shutdown rotation that terrifies any potential postseason opponent. You know who does, though? A whole bunch of potential No. 4 and No. 5 seeds. If you’re a Wild Card team, whom would you rather play in the first round: One of the Astros/Rangers/Blue Jays/Rays ... or the Twins? An excellent argument could be made that you’d rather have the No. 6 seed – which has the added bonus of missing the No. 1 seed AL seed, whoever that is, if you beat the Twins – than the No. 4 or No. 5. If it comes down to the last weekend and this is still unsettled, you’d be kidding yourself if you didn’t think any of the teams involved weren’t thinking about this.
The Rangers currently own the No. 2 seed in the AL, with the playoff schedule set. But much can change from now until the start of October.
The chase is on.
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