For one glorious game, the World Champion 2023 Texas Rangers showed up in 2024. Finally, after 121 games.
The Rangers offensive struggles can really be traced to one source. Adolis Garcia. While the entire lineup contributed to the World Series championship, Garcia put the Rangers on his shoulders and delivered the title.
He was an offensive weapon in 2023 and 2022, driving in 100-plus runs in each. This season, he is on pace for seventy-five. That’s not bad but that’s not dominating. That’s not putting-the-team-on-his-shoulders swagger.
It’s that swagger and the accompanying joy that’s been missing from the Rangers lineup this year. It’s that threat of impending doom to the opposing pitcher. That feeling that nothing is impossible because Adolis is coming up soon.
Last night’s game against the Red Sox looked like just another lost, miserable, rudderless game for the Rangers offense.
Every time they scored, the Red Sox came right back in the bottom half of that inning and scored more.
Texas got a run in the first. Boston, two.
Texas got a run in the sixth. Boston two.
Texas got two runs in the eighth. Boston three. It was those last three that would normally be the dagger, putting the Red Sox up 7-3 going into the ninth, an inning this year’s Rangers team usually takes off.
But something magical happened in that ninth inning. Seager and Smith opened with singles. The tying runs were on. The next two Rangers, customarily, got out. So they were down to their last out, as they so often are. But Wyatt Langford drilled the second pitch he saw over the Big Green Monster and tied the game.
Then, in the tenth, Jonah Heim smacked a two-run homer to stun the Red Sox.
The Rangers fought back. Not once, not twice, but three times.
And none of this happens without the two home runs Adolis Garcia hit to keep the Rangers close. He hadn’t hit a home run since July 26. In fact, he hit just two home runs in the entire month of July. It was his first multi-home run game of 2024 as well.
It’s been a long time since Adolis Garcia made a difference in the Rangers lineup. But when he is on, he makes all the difference in the world.
Last night’s 9-7 win in Boston was the most satisfying game of the season. It’s too late to save the Rangers season. But if that Adolis Garcia can return, it will do a lot to ease the anxieties in the offseason as to what to do in right field for 2025.
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TODAY’S GAME:
