Editor’s note: What’s old is new again. Mom jeans are fashionable. Same goes for loafers. You are, at most, three degrees of separation from someone with a variation of a mullet. And the Rangers are back playing October baseball.
So, back for the first time in seven years is Jamey’s Magic Number format. The premise is simple: for however many wins the Rangers have left to capture the World Series, Jamey will write that many items in this column. After Sunday’s 11-8 win against Baltimore, that number is now 9. If they take Game 3 in Arlington on Tuesday, it will be 8. And if the Rangers go all the way? Well, that’s the only time you should be excited about a Jamey Newberg column with zero to say (even though you’ll forgive him when he inevitably finds a thing or five to remark upon the World Series trophy finally coming to Arlington).
Let’s have some fun.
Here we go: 9 things.
9. Jordan Montgomery had only one start all year in which he recorded fewer outs. The Rangers were outhit. They were the sloppier defensive team. They allowed three runs in Baltimore’s last half-inning, on a walk and four balls in play that averaged 103 mph off the bat.
But the Rangers now head home with an opportunity to sweep and three chances to advance.
As unlikely as the path to get there was, Texas 11, Baltimore 8 was more decisive than the score might suggest.
Because starter Grayson Rodriguez reverted to pre-Triple-A-renaissance Rodriguez, and he and seven Orioles relievers issued 11 walks on the day—including seven of the Rangers’ first 20 batters—creating unrelenting traffic and stress and, ultimately, enough Texas offense that the game was out of hand before Baltimore’s third inning.
You feel good if your pitcher(s) throw twice as many strikes as balls. Texas did that: 109 strikes, 54 balls. The Orioles, meanwhile, didn’t come close, throwing 56 percent of their 206 pitches for strikes. Up and down the lineup, Rangers hitters’ refusal to expand the zone was the story of the game.
There were “Baltimore vs. Everybody” T-shirts for sale outside Camden Yards this weekend. It was a fairly apt description of Game 2.
8. Rodriguez famously turned his rookie season around after a brutal home start against the Rangers late in May (eight earned runs in 3 1/3 innings) resulted in a two-month ticket to Norfolk, where, among other things, he ditched his cutter. At the time of his demotion, the 23-year-old had a 7.35 ERA and opponents’ OPS of .956 in 10 starts. Since his mid-July return: a 2.58 ERA and .590 OPS in 13 starts.
He was more like the spring version on Sunday, touching 100 with his fastball but not locating it. He squirmed out of a bases-loaded jam in the first but needed 27 pitches to do it. His second inning went this way: walk, single, groundout, walk, 30-foot single, single, fielder’s choice, single. He made terrible throws on the groundout and the baby single, bailed out on the former when Ryan Mountcastle laid out to short-hop it on the backhand side but unable to get any help on the latter when he soft-aimed Mitch Garver’s tapper and allowed the DH to beat it out.
In that fateful second frame, which he didn’t complete, Rodriguez had two strikes on six hitters—and got one of them out.
Rodriguez is going to be a problem for the American League—he already was the last two and a half months of the regular season—but it looked like Game 2 got pretty big for him. Just like they did in May, the Rangers capitalized.
7. Montgomery had been a victim of poor run support for much of the season—the Cardinals and Rangers were 11-21 in his regular-season starts—but was lavished with run support on Sunday. He needed it, too, and so the script was flipped: Texas’ hitters bailed out Montgomery after the Rangers’ current top starter did the same for them so many times since coming over at the deadline.
And unlike Rodriguez, who enjoyed that plus-plus defensive play from Mountcastle, Montgomery was let down by his first baseman when Nathaniel Lowe made an unfortunate play in the first that cost Montgomery two runs and 17 pitches, the latter of which might have hastened his exit. After getting leadoff hitter Adley Rutschman to pop out to start the Baltimore first, Mountcastle beat a low fastball into the ground; it bounded up 30 feet wide of first base. The play there was for Lowe to cover the bag and Marcus Semien to make the play; Semien was well into position to do it. (My seat behind the third-base dugout gave me an ideal vantage point.) Instead, Lowe gathered it and hit a sprinting Montgomery in stride, only for Mountcastle to beat Lowe’s throw and Montgomery’s tap by half a step.
If Semien fields it, and Lowe is on the bag, they save more than that half-step, and it’s out No. 2. Anthony Santander’s ensuing pop-out to shortstop would have been the third out rather than the second.
Instead, it was single, walk, two-run single, groundout. A 32-pitch inning could have been half that. Montgomery went on to face only four batters in a shutdown second but needed 22 pitches to do it. Baltimore hitters did a good job of working counts and getting to the Texas bullpen early.
Maybe they wish they hadn’t.
6. Gunnar Henderson opened the bottom of the fifth with a 109-mph blast over the right field fence on a changeup that got too much of the plate. After that, Austin Hays turned around a curveball that also got too much of the plate, this time sending it to right field at 103 mph. Montgomery’s day was done.
Enter Cody Bradford, who was left off the Wild Card Series roster (perhaps, I’ve speculated, because he was being held for a possible Game 1 start had the Rays series lasted a full three games). Recall that ideal of throwing two strikes for every ball? The rookie settled the game down masterfully by throwing 39 strikes and 12 balls, an extraordinary 76 percent strike rate.
Mixing a curve and change with a fastball that exceeded 92 mph only three times (but that repeatedly flummoxed hitters up in the zone due to elite extension), Bradford kept the Orioles off balance and retired 11 of the 14 he faced. The 10-5 lead he inherited stayed that way until Josh Sborz relieved him with two outs in the eighth.
Bradford pitches with Montgomery-level guts and guile. Rodriguez looked like a rookie at times in Game 2. Bradford did not.
5.
It wasn’t some crazy epiphany to suggest after Game 1 that it was time to give the three-hole back to Mitch Garver. It was just time.
He hadn’t faced a pitcher—aside from Max Sherzer in his sim game—in a week and struck out in the first inning after Semien (single) and Corey Seager (walk, his first of five) had reached. In the second, again with two runners on, he hit the dribbler that Rodriguez lobbed late to first.
But in the third, Garver found his timing.
Orioles reliever Bryan Baker, after getting Josh Jung to fly out, walked Leody Taveras, Semien, and Seager in succession to bring Garver back up. In came Jacob Webb, who had allowed Jung to homer as soon as he’d entered Game 1 the day before. After getting a generous called strike on a breaking ball below the zone, Webb missed badly on three straight pitches: two in the dirt, one in Garver’s eyes. On 3-1, Webb came back with exactly the pitch that Garver punishes—a mid-90s fastball up in the zone and right over the plate—and the 32-year-old did just that, sending it comfortably over the heightened and deepened fence in left for a game-breaking grand slam.
It was the second postseason grand slam in franchise history, following Nelson Cruz’s 11th-inning blast to beat the Tigers in the 2011 ALCS.
We should have our No. 3 hitter for the rest of the playoffs, however long this team lasts. If nothing else, Garver provides the threat of what he did in the third inning on Sunday, theoretically making it less inviting for teams to pitch around Seager (though two of his five walks did come later in the game).
4. By virtue of the work Evan Carter was doing in the nine-hole, Semien has hit with runners on base more often than not for a couple weeks. It’s hard to tell whether he’s pressing or if he’s just a little out of sync, but his timing is off: Semien came into Game 2 in a 1-for-18 skid with one walk.
That makes his two-hit, one-walk performance encouraging, although there were several awkward swings and he fell to 1 for his last 14 at-bats with runners in scoring position. The last opportunity did result in a run on a groundout to shortstop (aided by Jorge Mateo’s bobble), but it came on a pitch that Semien is typically as reliable as anyone in driving it in the air to get a run in from third.
For now, the Rangers are winning in spite of Semien’s cold streak. But they’re going to need his bat to keep this thing going deep into the month.
3. Lowe is going through a lot personally, and I have all kinds of compassion for the guy. But he just looks lost at the plate and down on himself. He could really use a day, you would think, but (1) there’s not really another dependable first baseman to turn to—Garver played one inning there this season and that’s it on the ALDS roster—and (2) I am not in the business of second-guessing Bruce Bochy when it comes to managing players, managing situations, managing temperament.
I would love to think Bochy showing this level of faith in Lowe will pay off soon. But it’s hard to watch.
2. Taveras, on the other hand, is not hard to watch these days. He’s had a knack for driving the ball in two-strike counts all year, and he did it again to open the Rangers’ scoring and tie Game 2 in the second inning, smoking a 98-mph Rodriguez fastball low and away to left-center field to score two. Taveras added a pair of walks and scored three times and played a solid center field.
The way Taveras is playing drives home the fact that there’s very little relief in the lineup for opposing pitchers. Especially if Garver continues to pose a power threat behind Seager.
1. After winning the pennant in 2010 and 2011, then playing a 163rd game in both 2012 and 2013, the Rangers bounced back from a disastrous 2014 to win the West in 2015 and travel to Toronto for the ALDS. New manager Jeff Banister’s group won Game 1 and Game 2 across the border and returned home needing just one win in three tries to advance to the ALCS.
You know the rest.
This series isn’t over.
My favorite MLB memories are headlined by the times I’ve been fortunate enough to be in the ballpark for road playoff wins. The October chill and the moments of (eerie) silence, pierced only by the yells coming out of the visitors’ dugout and the chorus of boos in the crowd when the Rangers just prove to be too much. These last two days have been just about perfect.
But this is no time to get ahead of ourselves. We have to stay focused. Keep an eye on the prize. Avoid looking too far ahead. Be faithful to routine. So I’m headed to Miss Shirley’s one more time on my way to the airport. You don’t mess with a streak.
Author
