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Thoughts on a 3-2 Rangers win

Walkoff wins are still fun...

By Adam J. Morris
Ronald Martinez

Rangers 3, Angels 2

  • Winning is still better than losing.  Watching the Rangers players celebrate the walk-off victory, in the middle of August in a meaningless season, its clear that winning still means a lot to them.
  • Remember early in the season, when there were all those walkoff wins the first couple of weeks?  That seems like eons ago.
  • Weird line for Nick Tepesch...a guy who relies on command and control walked 4 batters today in 7 innings, and threw just 52 strikes out of 91 pitches, including just 14 first-pitch strikes to the 29 batters he faced.  And yet, he allowed just 2 runs and 6 hits, and several of the hits he gave up were of the weak variety.  At the end of the day, he kept the Rangers in a position to win, lowered his ERA to 4.15, and continues to make his case that he deserves a rotation spot in 2015.
  • Neftali Feliz pitched a hitless, scoreless, 9 pitch 9th inning, and ended up picking up the win, his first in the majors since May of 2012.
  • There's a certain serendipity to the way the Rangers won.  The Angels scored both of their runs in the 2nd inning, on four straight singles.  The Rangers scored their final two runs in the 9th inning, on four straight singles.  The teams had a total of 15 hits, and over half of them came in those two four single streaks.
  • Mike Carp and Adam Rosales had the two RBI hits in the 9th off of Huston Street.  At the beginning of the season, I wasn't expecting them to be heroes of an August Ranger win.
  • Rosales also scored a run earlier in the game, when Rougned Odor drove him in to put the Rangers on the board in the first place.  Adam Rosales, 2 for 4 with a run scored and an RBI.  Let's just go ahead and assume he'll be back in 2015 as the UIF.  It will be easier for everyone to accept that way.
  • The only other Ranger to get on base more than once was Elvis Andrus, who had a single, a walk and a stolen base.  Yay Elvis!
  • I'm pretty sure I would rather see the Angels win the A.L. West than the A's, but either way, it still feels good to beat the Angels.