Texas Rangers Week 7 Recap: Knocked Back Down to Earth

Season record: 17-21

Week 7 record: 1-5

Series record: 5-4, 3 splits (April home series against Oakland is TBD since Saturday’s game was postponed until June 8th)

After getting swept in Houston for the first time ever, it seems as thought the Rangers might be turning into the team we all expected to see coming into the season. Before this series, the Rangers were at .500 and I think that might have helped into believing this team had a chance against the Astros.

I’m not sure how everyone else has been feeling, but the Rangers haven’t seemed as bad at their stats are saying they are. They were outscored 33-11 in this four game series. They’re now 5-14 on the road and have dropped 13 of their last 18 games. I’ll be honest when I saw that record, I was a little shocked. I didn’t feel like I had watched them lose that many games in that amount of time, and a lot of that has to do with all the small, individual, bright spots they’ve had so far and even this week.

Joey Gallo hit his 100th career home run this week and became the fastest player in the A.L to do such. He also became the first player in MLB history to hit 100 home runs before hitting 100 singles (at the time of his 100th HR, he had 93 singles.) MLB is celebrating 150 years this year and to be able to be the first player to do anything after that long, is still pretty cool.

Hunter Pence hit a pinch hit grand slam off the first pitch he saw in the last game against Pittsburgh on Wednesday.

Rangers are actually third in the AL (eighth in the majors) in walks, so they’re showing patience.... they are also fourth in the AL in strikeouts, so they’re also not showing patience... but hey they’re also fourth in the AL in homeruns so time to just rename the team to the Texas Joey Gallos.

For what it’s worth, they’re also fourth in the AL in OPS (behind the Astros, Twins, and Mariners.)

While it looks like the Rangers might be coming back down to earth, they’re record is only better than Toronto (16-24), Baltimore (14-26), and Kansas (14-27), they’re about to play the worst team in the AL, so there’s a chance a three game series against the Royals could be a turn back up for them.

And hey, Texas is only 3.5 games back in the wild card!