Thoughts on a 7-5 Rangers win

Rangers 7, A's 5

• Confession time -- the only reason I kept watching this game after Texas went down 5-0 was because I couldn't find anything else on.  I pulled up the guide, flipped through, found nothing, and grudgingly left it on the game, hoping I might see a Ranger run or two.
• This really just felt like a loss in the early innings.  Once Derek Holland started laboring in the third, then got pulled in the fourth, only to see Nick Martinez allow a pair of inherited runners to score (with the help of a weird error by Ian Desmond), it seemed an "L" was inevitable, and I just was hoping that the M's, at the time in extra innings with the Rays, would lose as well, keeping the lead in the A.L. West the same.
• The game-tying five run rally in the top of the sixth was one of the more improbable rallies we will see.  Sonny Gray isn't having a good year, but he's empirically a really good pitcher, he's historically bedeviled the Rangers, and he was cruising through five innings.  When Robinson Chirinos homered to lead off the sixth, my thought was, well, at least we won't get shut out.  Winning, at that point, wasn't even on the radar.
• Then Shin-Soo Choo and Ian Desmond had back to back doubles, and I thought, well, maybe we can get it a little closer and make it at least a game in the late innings.  A ground out and a sac fly later, Texas was down 5-3 with no one on and two out, and I thought, okay, this at least has made it a ball game again.  And then a Jurickson Profar single and a Rougned Odor home run later, it was a new game.  Chirinos's homer in the 7th made a win feel like an inevitability, and the Odor homer in the 8th, for the finally run, just seemed like piling on.
• Huge effort by the pen today.  Martinez had 2.1 scoreless innings, and Matt Bush, Jake Diekman and Sam Dyson each had a perfect inning apiece.  We praise the "winning pieces," but the only reason they even get a chance is because Martinez did solid work in long relief keeping Texas in the game.
• At 41-25, this is the Rangers best record ever after 66 games.  Texas is now up 6.5 games on Seattle, and goes for the series win tomorrow with Colby Lewis on the mound.