The last time team was eight games over .500 was in 2016 when they won the American League West.

Since losing five in a row and dropping to five games under in mid-May, the Rangers are 27-14. In the thirteen series they’ve played since, the Rangers have won (including the current one with Detroit) nine, split three and lost just one.

They are winning on the road now, where they were utterly clueless before. They are winning first games of series, where headscratchingly they weren’t before. They are winning with their bottom three in the rotation.

They are winning.

And right now the Rangers and Indians are just one game behind the Rays for the top wild card spot.

It appears to be a five-team race for two wild card spots between Tampa Bay, Texas, Cleveland, Boston, and Oakland. 

Baseball is fun again in Rangers country. This is a team of regular guys. No superstars. No prima donnas. Just guys stepping up and getting the job done. 

The Rangers haven’t had this deep of a bench in a long time. Other than Odor and the catchers, everyone on this team can be counted on to contribute on a daily basis. Some, of course, more than others. 

And that’s what makes this team slump proof. You don’t need all nine guys all hot at the same time. That rarely if ever happens. But if you have just one or two guys, they can be pitched around.

When you have six or seven guys in the lineup that can all, at any given at-bat, produce, it’s pretty hard to imagine all seven getting cold at the same time. 

Even if two or three of them do, there are enough productive bats to go around. 

That’s how you go from five under to eight over in six weeks. 

*****

TODAY’S GAME:

Ariel Jurado (4-3, 4.44) vs. Spencer Turnbull (3-7, 3.29)

Game time: 12:10