Texas Rangers unable to spoil it for the Oakland Athletics

The Texas Rangers did all they could to play spoilers yesterday for the Oakland Athletics.   Last season on September 30 the Rangers won their last 7 games and forced game 163 to make the playoffs for a 4th consecutive year.

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Yesterday Seattle Mariners fans were hoping the Rangers would do them a favor by beating the A’s and keeping their playoff hopes alive.

The Athletics have been a bit of a pain for the Texas Rangers over the past few seasons.  In the 2012 season the Athletics managed to catch the Rangers near the end of the season and on game 162 over took them for the division title. It looked like the Rangers were going to spoil their playoff hopes in the last 4-games series of the season.  To many people’s surprise in the end of September they started playing good baseball against good teams.

But, yesterday was another day the Rangers offense struggled against Sonny Gray.  Although, really credit should be given to Sonny Gray for having a very good day.  He did everything right and kept the Rangers hitters off balanced for most of the day.  Gray worked a complete game shutout on a very efficient 103 pitches only allowing 6 hits and recording 5 strikeouts.

It would have been nice to see the A’s have to go through the same pain as the Rangers did last year.  Maybe the A’s wouldn’t have won the play-in game.  But, we’ll never know now.   At least this season is finally done and most can start to forget about it.