It all seems to be lining up, doesn’t it?
The Rangers, fresh off running through one American League powerhouse after another after another as underdogs, make their long-awaited World Series return as comfortable favorites. This tracks considering the Arizona Diamondbacks have won the third-fewest games ever for a World Series finalist, finished with the regular season with a negative run differential, and employ only three hitters doing much of anything this month.
This is a recipe for confidence—or at least it would be, were these not the 2023 Texas Rangers, disregarders of logic, ignorers of predictability. I wrote about that phenomenon last month, when Texas was clinging by its fingernails to a wild-card spot after squandering a commanding lead in the American League West. These words feel like a cool nine years ago now because in the weeks since that column, the Rangers stacked four consecutive wins to vault back into the division lead, then lost four of their final six regular-season games to let Houston overtake them, before ripping off seven straight wins to open the playoffs, followed by three brutal losses to shove them to the brink of elimination, only for the team to score 20 runs in the ensuing two road games to knock out the Astros and take home the American League pennant.
So, yeah, that’s what we’re dealing with.
This is a team whose leadoff man, Marcus Semien, is hitting .264/.347/.368 with two extra-base hits this postseason despite being the game’s second-highest-paid second baseman. Whose first baseman, Nathaniel Lowe, is batting .212 with a sub-.300 on-base percentage. The Texas Rangers have just two starting pitchers they can count on, which is one more than the number of dependable relievers, now down to one-ish after the Houston series reminded everyone that to know Jose Leclerc is to accept that no matter how glossy the statistics are or how punishing the stuff might be, he is liable to disintegrate at the worst possible moment.
Then there is the weight of history. If, as I recently posited online, this World Series appearance more closely mirrors the 2010 run (delightful, unexpected, maximally good vibes) than 2011 (loaded with expectations, experience, and, ultimately, disappointment), it is difficult to ignore the parallel between this Arizona team and the San Francisco Giants squad that seemed so inferior on paper to both the Rangers and the teams they had already dispatched, only for San Francisco to cook them in five games.
You need not search hard, then, to locate reasons why the Rangers may struggle to become World Series champions, regardless of how confident the sharps may be.
But how about why not?
Why not the Rangers, helmed by Corey Seager, a shoo-in for American League MVP in most every other year that didn’t feature Shohei Ohtani at his two-way apex, who is posting the most casual OPS north of 1.100 imaginable this postseason?
Why not the Rangers, paced emotionally by Adolis Garcia, the heir to Nelson Cruz as the late bloomer made good, who bashes the sort of homers that rattle buildings and engineer playoff moments that reverberate throughout the country?
Why not the Rangers, with a manager who may or may not dabble in the occult, given Bruce Bochy’s invincibility in Game 7s and his spooky ability to make damn near every lineup tweak or pitching change pay off, even the ones that seem quixotic on the surface?
Why not the Rangers, whose best pitcher throws 95 on a twice-reconstructed elbow, whose No. 3 hitter is an utterly unintimidated 21-year-old with less than two months in the big leagues, whose indomitable catcher shrugged off a torn tendon in his wrist, whose marquee trade deadline acquisition rallied from a should-be-season-ending shoulder injury—and who play every bit as resilient as those things suggest they should?
Why not the Rangers, who ply their trade in North Texas, where everyone has waited so patiently for another winner, another champion, another reason to throw a parade? And why not the Texas Rangers, the only one of the big four teams never to have delivered those things, who surely cannot be doomed to collect consolation prizes forever, right?
Why not the Rangers, who have spent seven months defying, disproving, and disabusing every notion that an obviously flawed team cannot also be a great one, a special one, perhaps even a transcendent one?
Why not the Rangers?
Why not now?
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