Monday Morning Rangers Links

October baseball is finally here with three games remaining in the regular season. Yesterday's double header was emotionally exhausting for Rangers fans with a blown Joe Nathan save ruining a pretty good Yu Darvish start and wasting some Nelson Cruz missiles, of both the arm and bat variety, in the first game and then requiring full Mike Napoli Hero Mode to save the second game after Derek Holland put the team down 4-0 before the bottom of the first inning.

With a split in the double header and an A's win over the Mariners the Rangers have clinched a playoff spot and only need one win in Oakland to lock up the AL West, while the Angels would need to sweep the Mariners and have the Rangers sweep the A's just to get a tiebreaker game with the winner of that game having to play the Wild Card play in game the next day.

On the subject of Mike Napoli, Gil Lebreton of the S-T describes him as the Rangers' guardian Angel and Richard Durrett of ESPN breaks down the torment Napoli inflicts on his former club. Thanks again Tony Reagins!

Durrett also talks about the resilience of the Rangers to come back after a tough loss to relieve the pressure building.

Drew Davison of the S-T recaps yesterday's events and talks about the Rangers clinching a playoff spot for a third straight year.

At DMN, Gerry Fraley says behind the paywall that the Rangers are relieved to get a playoff spot, but there's still work to be done. There's also a blog post by Fraley saying that Yu Darvish didn't feel that sharp after his layoff, but the Angels described him as "filthy".

And finally on the injury front, Fraley also blogs that the Rangers expect both Adrian Beltre and Michael Young to be able to play tonight after having to leave last night's second game with a shoulder strain and achilles strain respectively. T.R. Sullivan talks about Mike Adams seeing two specialists about this thoracic outlet syndrome and hopes to be able to pitch through the issue.