Joey Gallo touches home after hitting his 40th home run of the season.

Only five more beatdowns remaining.

This is like being forced to binge watch the final season of Happy Days. Way way way after they had jumped the shark. After all the stars had deserted and it was just the C-list celebrities. (The term “jump the shark” came from Happy Days, in fact, after the episode in which Fonzy literally jumped over a shark on water skis.)

If this season was a TV series, it would have been cancelled after the third episode. Yet here we are after episode 157 and the ugliness continues.

The Rangers had been cruising through five innings. Unfortunately for them, regulation games are now nine innings long. And in the sixth inning, the wheels fell off. It is no coincidence that in the sixth inning is when Martin Perez entered the game.

The announcers, who are paid by the team, did a good job of reminding viewers that it was a fluke, the result of some really cheap hits and bad luck.

But when a fluke touches home, it counts as a run. And four touched home in the sixth inning.

Yes, they were cheap runs. But they count. A broken-bat bloop single. A cheap grounder to third that turned into another Profar thowing error, his eighteenth throwing error of the season. A cheap grounder to short that became an adventure. A bases-loaded walk.

Martin Perez seems to have bad karma surrounding him whenever he enters a game. Yes, it was unfair. But life and baseball are unfair. Good teams take advantage of that sort of thing. Baseball is, after all, all about the broken plays, and how you respond to them.

In the end, Perez was charged with his first blown save (there will be many more where that came from) and the Rangers lost their ninety-first game of the season, 4-1, to the Angels.

Only five more episodes remain.

Mercifully.

*****
TODAY’S GAME:

Yohander Mendez (2-2, 6.04) vs. Andrew Heaney (9-10, 4.21)
Game time: 9:07

How the Rangers hit against Heaney.
How the Angels hit against Mendez.