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 winning Game 4 in Arizona, 11-7, on Tuesday, that number is now 1. If they win Game 5 at Chase Field on Wednesday—or, failing that, Game 6 or 7 in Arlington this weekend—and the Rangers, for the first time ever, finish the deal? 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: 1 thing.
ONE. THING.
1. What a response.
The dark cloud that hung over the Rangers all morning and afternoon never lifted. Though they won Game 3 in Arizona to go up two games to one in the best-of-seven series, it came at a price: an hour before Game 4, the team announced it was removing Adolis Garcia (oblique strain) and Max Scherzer (back spasms) from the World Series roster, given the unlikelihood that they’d be able to recover in time from the injuries they suffered in Game 3 to help in the balance of the series. The former had been one of the two most feared hitters on the Rangers this postseason, if not in the entire league. The latter would have ideally lined up to start a potential Game 7.
Bruce Bochy would say after Game 4 that he didn’t have to say anything to his team when the decision was made to shut down Garcia and Scherzer. “They’re professionals,” Bochy said. But during a pregame meeting, Garcia spoke to the group, with several players remarking how emotional and courageous a moment that was.
They came out in Game 4 not feeling sorry for themselves, but on the attack. A five-spot in the second inning and another one in the third—all 10 runs scoring with two outs—paved the way for an 11-7 win that was only that close because the very back of the bullpen was called on after seven innings.
It has entered cliché territory to call the Rangers a resilient group, but Tuesday’s win epitomized the label. Garcia is lost; his replacement in the lineup, Travis Jankowski, playing in the first World Series of his nine-year career, picks up two hits, drives in two runs, and scores twice in his first start since September 6. Scherzer’s injury had forced the bullpen to throw six innings in the first of three straight at Chase Field; Andrew Heaney, in the first World Series of his 10-year career, allows a single run in five innings, the most he has thrown since late August.
Josh Jung, reinserted in the No. 5 spot in the lineup that was mostly his before an early-August thumb fracture, singles twice and doubles, scoring two runs—including the first one of the game on a spectacular read of a two-out, two-strike wild pitch in the top of the second that squirted away from catcher Gabriel Moreno. (Jumping on the scoreboard first mattered: the two teams came into the game a combined 16-0 this postseason when scoring first.)
The most impactful reemergence, however, belonged to Marcus Semien, who dressed up for Halloween as Marcus Semien. Nobody in baseball came to bat more in the regular season than the 33-year-old ironman, whose 753 plate appearances stretched to 825 through Game 3. Perhaps wear and tear explains the gruesome, playoff-long slump he was mired in: until two nights ago, he was hitting .190 and was 2 for 16 with runners in scoring position in these playoffs.
But on Monday, Semien drove in the first run of the game with a third-inning, two-out single. Whether that got him going or whether the loss of Garcia was all he needed to dig deeper doesn’t matter. What does is that he regained his early-season-MVP-candidate form in Game 4.
Despite a penchant for swinging early in the count and, lately, hitting balls in the air without authority, he started the game with an eight-pitch at-bat that ended with a 104 mph groundout to shortstop.
He came up again in the following inning. Down in the count, 1-2, and with two outs, he hooked a triple into the left-field corner on a slider down and away, extending the lead to 3-0.
In the third, again with two outs, he drove a 96 mph fastball up and away—the pitch that has tormented him for weeks—over the fence in left to turn 7-0 into 10-0. Semien’s resurgence was a statement development, especially in light of Garcia’s absence.
The Rangers had recorded consecutive five-run innings, a first in the 119-year history of the World Series. Not only had Semien batted three times by that point, the Diamondbacks had yet to send their No. 8 and 9 hitters to the plate.
Arizona’s slumping counterpart to Semien has been cleanup hitter Christian Walker, who came into the game hitting .173 with one home run in 66 plate appearances this postseason. He, too, showed life at the plate on Tuesday night—but it was his performance in the field that stood out.
The reigning National League Gold Glove first baseman had a gift-wrapped opportunity to keep Texas off the board in the third inning, a one-out, 74 mph skimmer off the bat of Jonah Heim that Walker was in a position to backhand and start an inning-ending 3-6-1 double play on. But he booted the grounder and retired nobody. Instead of jogging back to the dugout with 21 outs to chip away at a five-run deficit, Arizona’s defense could do nothing as Jankowski doubled in a pair before Semien’s three-run bomb, which may have stayed in the park had the Chase Field roof been closed.
The Diamondbacks (56 errors) and the Rangers (57 errors) played the cleanest defense in baseball this year. Neither team had committed an error in the first three games. Bochy commented before Game 4 about how great the baseball had been in this series, with crisp defense on both sides. Hitting and pitching come and go, he added, but defense typically doesn’t swing like that.
Walker’s miscue was remarkably out of character. One Diamondbacks fan sitting near me rued the possibility that he’d taken his extended offensive doldrums with him into the field. That’s something Semien has been able to avoid; his defense has been on point all along.
I’m 1,000 words in and somehow haven’t mentioned Corey Seager; any further, and my editor will demand a rewrite. His 431-foot blast on left-handed reliever Kyle Nelson’s second pitch, a center-cut slider, completed a second-inning cycle for the offense—Jung double, Jankowski single, Semien triple, Seager homer—and unleashed a chorus of boos that had nothing to do with the holiday.
A ground-rule double in the ninth improved Seager’s 2023 postseason slash line to .306/.442/.694 (1.135 OPS). I suppose Yordan Alvarez gives him company as the game’s most dangerous hitter, but toss in Seager’s improved defense and, well, I’m quite glad he’s here for eight more seasons after this one.
When Seager came up to bat in the third inning, the score was already 10-0.
10-0 is also the Rangers’ record this postseason when scoring first.
10-0 is also the Rangers’ record this postseason on the road.
10-0 is also, if you remove the hyphen, the percentage of uncertainty of how I feel right now about the Rangers and about baseball and about what emotions will pummel me if the Rangers win one more game in this series, not to mention the depths of emotion that will shut me down if they don’t.
It’s never easy. Even for this team, on the brink of history. The Rangers have lost eight All-Star players to extended injury layoffs this year, with Garcia and Scherzer now going down a second time. They took an 11-1 lead into the bottom of the eighth inning on Tuesday and somehow still needed Jose Leclerc to get loose and throw 10 pitches under stress, a night after throwing 16 and a night before he could be needed to close out a potential championship-clinching lead. He hasn’t been asked to pitch on three straight days all year.
I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to write “0 Things.” I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to write “0 Things.” And if that time comes, I have no idea what form it will take. It’s not something I’m willing to think about until I have to step in the box.
I’m able to build in one off-day for my SMU sports law class each semester. I’d like to think the reason I, when putting together this fall’s syllabus back in July, decided to give my students October 31 off was because I thought the Rangers might be playing in a World Series Game 4. In truth, it was probably just a thought that the students might dig having Halloween off.
But maybe there were external forces at work—maybe Dad reaching out, three months after he died, suggesting to me that I’d best not be in a classroom on Tuesday the 31st of October.
I can’t believe I had reason to be where I was Tuesday night. And that I might experience something in the next few days—and as soon as tonight—that, as I hand this off to my editor, I have no idea how I’ll handle. No idea how I will respond. Because none of us do, not to this, after our lifetimes of waiting.
Let’s find out.
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