The Rangers old nemesis showed up again yesterday in Oakland. 

Sloppy baseball.

But if you want to look at the positives, it took the Rangers forcing the Athletics to take this victory from them to lose the game. They gave Oakland so many chances the conventional way and Oakland couldn’t do it.

The Athletics had base runners early and often but couldn’t bring them in. So, the Rangers took matters into their own butterfingery hands. A throwing error here. A fielding error there. Another one. A couple more bad throws and Texas gifted Oakland five runs.

It took some sloppy defense from Oakland in the top of the ninth to let the Rangers tie the game. But the Athletics, like they had been doing all game, got their leadoff runner on in the bottom of the ninth, bringing him around to score on a base hit to left. The Rangers throw home from left to try to nail the runner was just a bit off target. Missing the catcher at home by just thirty feet. 

When you make five errors, you have no business winning a game. The fact the Rangers took this one all the way to the bottom of the ninth shows just how bad the Oakland Athletics are. But even teams that are not even trying to win can in fact win if the other team isn’t really trying to win either.

Every time this team gets your hopes up, they throw in a clunker like this that reminds you, oh, yeah, it’s the Texas Rangers.

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