The Rangers Are Back In First Place

Having swept Major League Baseball’s best team — on the road — the Rangers now sit at 44-32, which vaults them into an outright lead in the AL West (again). Texas’ ongoing winning streak of 5 games is a season-high.

It was only a week ago that the Rangers trailed the Athletics by 3.0 games, in the division they once led by 7.0. Slumps. That’s why I speak so often of regression — it’s a very real occurrence; every player goes through variance. As Ranger fans, the only thing we know is that losing 6 out of 7 home games to Cleveland and Toronto is a helluva way to coax all the naysayers out of hiding.

Who would have thought last Sunday that Texas would have won 6 games in 7 days against two of the stoutest clubs in baseball?

It’s not my nature to blow the significance of one win, or one series, completely out of proportion. Fans and pundits alike tried their mightiest to make the matchup with the Cardinals some sort of payback series, or what have you, but the reality is it’s only 3 games in the middle of June. Important games, yes, but not games that will bring them any closer to winning the 2011 World Series. This is 2013, and it’s another damn good team with as good a chance as anyone to make a return trip to the Fall Classic.

This week the Rangers take on the Yankees and Reds, which includes an exciting Yu Darvish-Huroki Kuroda matchup on Tuesday.