The Rangers will open their 11 day, 10 game AL West road trip with a four game series against a team they’re chasing in the wild card race.
The Angels currently hold the second wild card spot, tied with the Minnesota Twins.
The Angels have a 64-60 record and are 8-2 for their last 10 while the Rangers are 61-62 and 7-3 for their last 10.
The Rangers are just 2.5 games back from the Wild card, with a series win they could not only get above .500 for the first time since June 27 when they were 39-38, they could also be within a half game of the second wild card spot. A sweep would take it from the Angels.
In game one Hamels and the Rangers will face Tyler Skaggs for the third time this season. He’s 1-3 with a 3.63 ERA on the season. Skaggs is 2-1 with a 5.46 ERA against the Rangers in his career, both starts against them this season have been no decisions. Elvis is 6-12 with a 1.433 OPS against him and he’s the only Ranger with a homer off of him.
Game two will feature Tyson Ross against Ricky Nolasco. Nolasco is currently 6-12 with a 5.16 ERA. In four starts against the Rangers, he’s 1-3 with a 8.68 ERA. When he faced them in the beginning of July, he went just 1.2 inning after giving up eight runs.
Ross is 0-7 with 3.49 ERA in 11 starts against L.A.
Wednesday’s game will feature Andrew squared when Cashner pitches against Heaney. Cashner last faced the Angels in 2015, he went seven innings and gave up three runs on eight hits and struck out six. Heaney also last faced the Rangers in 2015. He made two starts against them that year and went 1-1 with a 5.23 ERA. This will be Heaney’s second start of the season.
Martin Perez will start game four and the Angels will announce their starter later apparently.
Elvis has a career .314 average against the Angels, the highest ever by a Ranger with at least 300 at-bats against them. Beltre has a .312.
All four of these games will be 9:07 starts so hopefully we survive without going too crazy from lack of sleep. (I probably just jinxed this and we’ll have five hour games, sorry in advance.)