The Rangers lone All-Star Game representative, Yu Darvish once again held a team scoreless—his own.

Hard to believe that the All-Star break is here already. It seemed like just yesterday that Sam Dyson was blowing two games against Cleveland to open the season and set the tone for the Rangers 2017.

A win yesterday would have been a sweep of the Angels, would have meant the Rangers ended the first half on a four-game winning streak, would have put the Rangers at .500, would have done wonders for the psyche of this team.

Would have.

Of course, the Rangers lost.

It was the kind of game that perfectly reflected their season. Great at one aspect, not so great at the others.

Yu Darvish was dominating. Just three hits and two earned runs in 7.1 innings. If any other pitcher did that, he would win nine out of ten times. With Darvish, and the Rangers incredible shrinking offense whenever he pitches, it’s two out of ten. In his last nine appearances, Darvish has thrown a quality start six times. The Rangers have won once.

The bats didn’t show up. Despite being gifted six walks, the Rangers couldn’t score.

The defense was typical Rangers defense, meaning guys with gloves and not a whole lot of understanding for what to do with them.

And the bullpen allowed its obligatory run.

In other words, Rangers baseball.  Just falling short. Almost getting there. Not quite.

So now the Rangers will go into the second half at 43-45, on the endless treadmill between second and fourth in the A.L. West, with illusions of post-season.

So much of the post-game talk was optimism, of course, saying things like, “we finally have the team on the field we have wanted all year” and “this is the Rangers team we thought we would have in spring training” and other things to remind fans that this is the first time the Rangers have had their key pieces back together all at the same time because of injury.

They are 5-8 in their last four series, and 4-5 in their last three.

The real Rangers, finally.

The fans need this break more than the Rangers do.

*****
ALL-STAR BREAK.