Week 3 Recap: Rise on the Road and Fall at Home

Season record: 7-9

Week 2 record: 4-3

Series record: 2-3

Rangers won a four game series against the reigning AL champs, winning game four in 10 innings to defeat the Tampa Bay Rays for their first road series win of 2021.

After scoring just four runs over four games over the weekend and Monday, the Rangers bats came alive in the last three games against the Rays for 19 runs.

Ronald Guzman was injured early in Monday’s game and will be out for a few weeks with a meniscus cartilage tear in his right knee. Adolis Garcia was called up to take his spot on the roster and quickly filled an offensive void and became the first Ranger to hit a go ahead extra inning homer for his first big league home run.

Then they came home for a quick series against the Baltimore Orioles and sputtered.

It’s definitely those god awful Friday home game hats that are cursed and should be burned. Two Friday’s in a row where Joey Gallo breaks up a perfect game with a free pass to first base (HBP and a walk) in the fourth inning is no coincidence. Cursed. Ugly. Caps.

The Rangers escaped being swept by Baltimore by winning Sunday’s game 1-0 in a walk-off after 10 innings.

Which lends itself to a point that’s being brought up a lot know, the Rangers kinda suck at home. For instance earlier this week they outscored the Rays 19-9. Against the Orioles? They were outscored 11-4.

So far at home, the Rangers are 3-6 at home with a -15 run differential. On the road they’re 4-3 with a +3. Now I realize that’s a low sample size and things could even out later on this season. (It should be noted in their shortened season in 2020, they were 16-14 with a -22 run differential. Granted they were way worse on the road with a 6-24 record and a -66 run differential.)

According to Baseball Reference, Texas has a .753 OPS on the road and at home .558 (this doesn’t include Sunday’s game stats.) They’ve scored 40 runs in seven games on the road and just 19 in nine games at home. That feels like a wildly different team and definitely something to keep track of throughout the rest of the season.

Texas heads back on the road for a six game road trip starting with three games in Anaheim to face the Los Angeles Angels then head to the south side of Chicago for a weekend series against the White Sox.