ARLINGTON, Texas — The Texas Rangers finished their homestand at 71-73 with 18 games left, two games behind the Houston Astros in the AL West and two games out of the third and final American League wild card spot.
Sunday’s 8-6 win over the Tampa Bay Rays split the four-game series and secured a winning homestand. Texas now leaves for a West Coast trip through Seattle and Arizona.
Rangers manager Skip Schumaker used nearly every player on his roster to get Sunday’s win, including pinch hitters, pinch runners, and a reliever pulled after one inning.
“I come in thinking we’re going to win every single day,” Schumaker said. “That’s the hard, honest truth, and those guys do as well.”
Jake Burger On The Texas Rangers Clubhouse
Jake Burger homered twice on Sunday. He said the Rangers are treating every remaining game as a playoff game.
“I think there’s a lot of belief,” Burger said. “I think when you lose those two games [against the Rays], it’s easy to hit the panic button a little bit. But I think there’s a lot of belief in this clubhouse amongst the guys. It’s still right there for us, both the Wild Card and the division. We just have to show up every single day and do our jobs.”
Texas dropped the first two games of the series at Globe Life Field, both after late comeback attempts. Saturday’s loss was the Rangers’ first back-to-back home defeat since July 4-5 against the Detroit Tigers.
Jacob deGrom On The Math
Jacob deGrom started Saturday night and turned in a quality start, six innings of two-run ball, in a 6-3 loss in 10 innings.
“That’s the reality of it,” deGrom said Saturday. “We know what our record is. We know we gotta win quite a bit. We gotta play really good baseball to get in this. I think we can do it. It’s keeping that positive mindset. Like we said, this one stings. It was a close game, and we weren’t able to win it. We gotta show up tomorrow and go from there.”
“That’s all you can do,” deGrom continued. “Obviously, I’ve said it throughout the year, there’s games we wish we could have back as a whole. There’s games I wish I could have back. But reality is we’re at where we’re at, and we have to play really good baseball to end the season to have a chance.”
Texas opens a three-game series at Seattle on Tuesday. First pitch at T-Mobile Park is scheduled for 8:40 p.m. CT.
