You knew it wouldn’t last. You knew it was too good to last. The Rangers offense and never-say-die spirit from Monday didn’t carry over Tuesday. It couldn’t carry over Tuesday because those random acts of offense are just that, random. 

Fact is, .220 hitters are .220 hitters for a reason, and the Rangers have a lineup full of those. Occasionally, they all get their rare hits in bunches, which happened Monday. But mostly, they get their frequent outs in bunches which happened last night, mostly with runners in scoring position in which they went 0-for9, and which happens most nights.

The Rangers lack of offense this season has been offset by a team that is usually flawless on defense. Usually. Of course, you can’t blame last night’s defensive lapse on the occasional error. You can blame it on Robert Garcia’s epic meltdown. He had been a reliable closer—a role he had never been asked to perform on his previous teams—for part of the season. Then, as baseball does, failure caught up with him. He had a series of well-publicized blown saves and losses, and was taken out of the closer role. 

Garcia took the mound in the seventh with Texas clinging to a 2-1. Arizona catcher Jose Herrera led off with a ground ball hit back to Garcia that he bobbled. Then, in his haste to erase Rangers fans hatred toward him and in his delusion into thinking he could still get the out, with the runner obviously going to be safe, Garcia executed an ill-advised desperate attempt to save face. Bending over between first and second, he hiked the baseball from under his legs, thirty feet over Rangers first baseman Rowdy Tellez, and into the camera well, allowing the Diamondbacks runner to take second, which he eventually scored,

It was such a disastrous, misplaced hike that Jerry Jones is interested in signing him up for the Cowboys. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when the Cowboys take interest in you. 

At the end of the game, Rangers manager Bruce Bochy summed it up with a half truth: “We were just bad,” he said, “We’re better than this.”

Yes, they were bad. No, they aren’t better than this. This is exactly what the Rangers are. A team not good enough. Everybody knows that. 

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