The Rangers Control Their Own Destiny, Again

A couple weeks ago, the Rangers appeared to be dead in the water. The writing was on the wall, the fat lady was in her final stanza, and the stories of Ron Washington’s failures and Jon Daniels’s shortcomings had become the mecca of the baseball universe. There were so many questions that seemingly needed answers until, well, until the Rangers started winning again. Now the narrative needs fixing, too.

After a 5-3 win on Friday night, and after a 7-4 win this afternoon, Texas is now 90-71 which, conflated by the Rays losing its last two games, moves the Rangers into a tie for the final wild card spot with 1 games to go. Much like last year, Game 162 will decide something; we just don’t know what. Yet.

For all intents and purposes, here are the various wild card scenarios:

• If the Rangers win tomorrow and Rays lose, Texas will play Cleveland on Wednesday in the wild card game.
• If the Rangers and Rays both win tomorrow, the Rangers will play Tampa Bay on Monday for the right to play the Indians on Wednesday. Same as if they both lose.
• If the Rangers and Rays win tomorrow, combined with an Indians loss, there will be a three-way tie for the wild card. In such a case, the Rays and Indians would play Monday night in Tampa, and the winner would get one of the two wild card spots. The loser, meanwhile, would go to Texas to play the Rangers on Tuesday, where the winner would, in turn, be the 2nd wild card team.
• If tomorrow the Rangers lose and Rays win, the Rangers will be out of the playoffs.

Make sense?

Anyway, for the Rangers sake, they know if they win tomorrow, at the very least they will get to participate past Game 162, and that’s all that really matters. If they receive help in the process, that will be a bonus.