Wait, what just happened?
Not only did the Rangers win to snap a five-game losing streak, they did a few things they have done only a precious few times this season.
They came from behind.
They scored runs after the sixth inning.
And they got a productive at-bat from Leody Taveras.
What next? Adolis Garcia returns to form? Nathaniel Lowe gets a key RBI? Jonah Heim gets a hit?
One can dream.
After two of the most disappointing losses of the season, one a thrashing the other a gut punch, the Rangers had one of their more rewarding wins of the season.
They had been characteristically no-hit through five innings. (How this team has not been no-hit this year is surprising.) But instead of folding up their tent and heading home early as they normally do, something snapped.
The fever broke.
The Rangers scored two runs in a single inning, the six, which is what they typically score in nine innings, to make it 3-3. Then, they scored two more in the seventh, on the strength of a Leody Taveras two-run homer. Taveras came into the game batting .056 for his last fourteen games. He wasn’t even in the starting lineup, as should be the case moving forward. But when Robbie Grossman, who hits lefties, came up to bat with a right-handed Mets pitcher now in the game, Bruce Bochy went with Taveras. Why? A blind, one-legged, one-armed Robbie Grossman has a better chance of getting a hit than Taveras. But when he pinch hit for Grossman, the announcers called Taveras the defensive replacement. The way Taveras butchers defense, that’s like called Yoko Ono the backup singer.
But, this time, the .209-hitting, 84-career-OPS+-sporting Taveras came through. As a result, the Rangers won 5-3 with a solid start, clutch hitting, and a lights-out bullpen.
They have been getting one of those three things this year. Sometimes two of the three. But rarely all three in the same game.
What just happened?
*****
TODAY’S GAME: