MLB playoffs 2023: Texas Rangers had a season to be proud of — but it wasn't enough to unseat the Houston Astros
With the AL West coming down to Game 162, the Rangers surrendered a division they led most of the year to the seemingly inevitable Astros
SEATTLE – If there’s a moral to be gleaned from the 2023 American League West — in which three teams entered the regular season’s final weekend still vying for the division — it’s that there are no allies in baseball. Scoreboard watching is a helpless position and often a futile endeavor. To look elsewhere for salvation in the standings is to be disappointed. You’re better off just winning.
Either that or: The Houston Astros are inevitable.
Of course, sports always require a little assistance in terms of rival teams coming up short, often at the hands of a third party playing for stakes of their own. The whole season is a web of interconnected results that snap into focus as the finish line approaches.
While the Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners battled in a four-game final series that seemed destined to determine not just the winner of the West but also a huge swath of the AL side of the playoff bracket, the Astros went to Arizona. Throw the Toronto Blue Jays into the mix, and four teams were fighting for two wild-card spots and the all-important division title that would come with a No. 2 seed and a bye.
Only the Astros swept their opponents. Only the Astros are guaranteed a spot in the division series.
One at a time, the Mariners and Rangers were let down by the Diamondbacks. On Saturday, after Seattle lost, the D-backs could’ve kept the Mariners’ hopes of sneaking into the postseason alive. Instead, the Astros won. On Sunday, the Rangers needed either a win of their own or an Astros loss to clinch the division. Instead, they lost, and the Astros won again. The Rangers and Astros finished the regular season with identical 90-72 records, but Houston holds the tiebreaker by virtue of a better head-to-head record. It helps to help yourself.
For the Rangers, Sunday’s 1-0 loss to the Mariners — who started a stellar George Kirby on their first and last meaningless game of the season — was a muting force on a celebratory day. It’s a bad sign for a lineup that usually mashes and a team that wins only when it does, but it doesn’t change the simple fact: Two years after losing 100 games and seven years after their last postseason appearance, the Rangers are playoff-bound.
After they secured themselves as much with their lone win this weekend in Seattle, the Rangers celebrated Saturday with a fully booze-soaked bash necessitating tarps and goggles. They didn’t go out after the revelry in the clubhouse — it was a tight turnaround, with a 12:10 p.m. PT start for Game 162, after all — but they were happy to have accomplished that much.
“You worked so hard, and you gotta experience the special moments, enjoy them,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “Or why do this?”
By contrast, the Astros stuck to an emphatically restrained recognition of having achieved the same: a wild-card berth that could be supplanted by something better less than 24 hours later. With the confidence that comes from getting at least as far as the Championship Series in six straight years, they decided to wait for what must surely feel a foregone conclusion at this point: the division title.
I guess we’ll never know 🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/86jCyYO8d8
— Houston Astros (@astros) October 1, 2023
The difference is all the more stark when you consider that the Rangers spent 138 days in first place this season, compared to the Astros’ 19. But that belies not only the recent track records of the two organizations but also the preseason projections that expected the Astros to win the division (as always, of late) and the Rangers to finish fourth, ahead of only the lowly Oakland A’s. Over the prior two seasons, only one team in baseball won more games than the Astros; only three teams lost more than the Rangers.
Knowing that, to have come so close to the division title marks an incredible turnaround for the Rangers, whose success this season thwarts the industry narrative that you can’t build a contender through free agency. Ownership commitment to winning — a euphemism for spending — is the envy of the sport. All that money the Rangers spent when they were coming off a 100-loss season is now the top two AL position players not named Shohei Ohtani.
Marcus Semien and Corey Seager top a lineup that scored more runs than any other American League team this season. Paired with an insatiable appreciation for pitching depth and an unflappable manager who’s delaying his entry into the Hall of Fame by being here, the Rangers won 90 games — enough to give them a shot at the franchise’s first championship. The point of their payroll was to play in the postseason. Mission accomplished.
Which is not to say they’re satisfied. The strangeness of Sunday was exemplified by the unopened boxes of Champagne (did they buy double ahead of time or ration the bubbly on Saturday?) being wheeled away from the visiting clubhouse as attendants hurriedly packed gear into an open truck.
The Rangers were leaving after the game regardless. But while a win would’ve sent them home to rest for the division series, the loss means they play Tuesday in Tampa. Granted, there are 18 teams that would gladly get on a plane to play again this year, but the clubhouse was subdued as Rangers players rushed to get out — Tampa is a long way from Seattle, and the Rays and Rangers will play the early game. Even with a day off in between, the next series looms.
Still, Bochy said his players should feel proud.
“You have to,” he said. But after a short toast Saturday, he didn’t think he would need to remind them again Sunday that the season had been a success.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “We’ll get to Tampa — trust me — they’ll feel the postseason then, and they’ll be excited.”