The definitive Top 10 Texas Rangers games of the 2010s

2010 to 2019 was unquestionably the most successful decade in the history of the Texas Rangers franchise. It saw two American League pennants, four divisional titles, and both the highs and lows of electric players like Josh Hamilton, Adrian Beltre, Prince Fielder and Joey Gallo, just to name a few.

I, just like the rest of you, have had to come to terms with the fact that the high points of this franchise are pretty meek in the grand scheme of things. Our not-so-friendly neighbors down south have been to three World Series and five straight American League Championship series in the last five seasons. Only Cleveland has a longer drought without a championship – and they actually have won two, so the Rangers are the team with the longest current drought WITHOUT a title.

The effervescent medicine for hurting baseball fans like us is that the brightest days are ahead of us. I always tell my Rangers friends that all the pain we have endured will one day lead to the sweet, succulent aroma of a well-earned World Series trophy, and all the hurt will accumulate into a grandiose feeling of pure ecstasy. And it will! Someday, the Texas Rangers are going to dogpile aside the pitchers’ mound and throw their gloves into the air and “World Series Champions” will be in the @Rangers Twitter bio. There will be a parade and everything. It WILL happen. Maybe not in 2022, maybe not even by 2122, but someday.

But, right now, owners and players don’t like each other, and I’m trying to think of things to write about. So, today, we’ll be looking at what stand out – at least in my humble opinion – as the ten greatest Texas Rangers games from 2010 to 2019. It is easy to get swept away in the broad strokes of success and to forget about some of the individual performances that got us to those points. I could include games that were objectively good from the eyes of a baseball fan (a la Game 6 from the ’11 World Series), but this is a list of the best *Rangers* games – the most thrilling matches where the good guys came out on top.

The 10 best Texas Rangers games of the 2010s

#10: Rangers clinch AL West in 2015 (October 4): Rangers 9, Angels 2

Starting off the list, we’ve got a nice little trip down memory lane with our old friend Cole Hamels.

Hamels was a wildly discussed target for Texas in the summer of 2015, and it had been a while since the club fronted a true ace. His acquisition at the trade deadline on July 31 turned out to be a monumental push for the Rangers, as they were gifted a 7-1 record from Hamels, as well as a 116 ERA+ and a 1.195 WHIP.

All of his dominance, however, climaxed on his very last start of the 2015 regular season. Texas entered the final game of the year with a one-game lead over Houston for the divisional crown, but what I think really stands out about this game is that it was the first real “we’re back” moment for the fans since Game 6 in 2011, even though the club would go on to lose in historic fashion to Jose Bautista and the Blue Jays in the ALDS.

The Angels jumped out to an early 2-0 lead thanks to a 2-run home run from Albert Pujols, but Hamels absolutely shut the Angels down the rest of the way. He finished with a complete game three-hit effort, Adrian Beltre drove in three runs, and the Rangers offense coasted the rest of the way.

Ultimately, this game isn’t an all-time highlight of the franchise, but it was such a moral win for a franchise that had seen a lot of heartbreak over the last few years. 2014 was a miserable season ridden with injuries, and the club saw the departure of Ron Washington. The Rangers lost the Game 163 tiebreaker to the Rays at home. The Rangers lost the 2012 Wild Card game to the Orioles at home. We all know how 2011 ended. It was an (albeit brief) instantaneous burst of joy to celebrate a Rangers turnaround for the better.

The 10 best Texas Rangers games of the 2010s

#9: Josh Hamilton’s Four-Homer Game (May 8, 2012): Rangers 10, Orioles 3

The legacy of Josh Hamilton is so saddening in hindsight.

The whole “separating the art from the artist” conversation is above my pay grade, but the fact remains that despite his flaws as a person, Josh Hamilton remains one of, if not the greatest player in club history, and his prime from 2009 to mid-2012 was a spectacle as a baseball observer. Drugs and alcohol bring parasitic destruction to people’s lives all over the world, so to see Hamilton rise from the ashes of them and become an MVP winning slugger, and turn into a  player who brought success to a franchise that had seen very little to that point, was endearing, uplifting, and something truly unnatural.

But Josh Hamilton the hitter was something special to witness in his prime, and something was in the air that night in Baltimore when Josh simply unloaded for four home runs.

We can at least look back fondly on the pure power that came from that swing, and no Ranger before or since has been able to match the feat of four blasts in one game. I’m not exactly sure what vendetta the Rangers have against the Orioles in Camden Yards, but some fun offense has been put up there through the years.

The 10 best Texas Rangers games of the 2010s

#8: 2010 World Series Game 3

The Texas Rangers won a World Series game. Finally.

Up until this point, I don’t think Rangers fans had an expectation of dominance of the 2010 World Series. Obviously we all wanted our team to win, but I remember there being an energy around the team of “this is only the beginning”. I was at Game 5 when we lost the series, and as we walked out to the parking lot, almost everyone around me was just as antsy as they were during first pitch. People were saying, “It’s incredible we even got here” and “We have the team to run it back”, things of that nature.

So even after back to back blowout defeats in San Francisco to begin the series, I think everyone just wanted to see us win Game 3 at home. Not just to get us back into the series, but just so we could experience the thrill of pulling it off.

The best Texas Rangers games of the 2010s

#7: 2011 ALCS Game 6: Rangers 9, Tigers 2

The 2011 postseason had a lot of memorable moments, but one of the most thrilling was the way the Rangers closed out the ALCS.

Texas won Games 1 and 2 at home, but dropped Game 3 and 5 in Detroit and had to come home to finish the job. Detroit scored twice in the first two innings, and things looked like they might take a bad turn for a Tigers team that had been through years of playoff disappointments, and thrown the kitchen sink for a VERY talented roster. Then the floodgates opened.

Texas exploded for a nine-run third inning and did not look back, routing the Tigers 15-5 and securing their berth in their second straight World Series.

The 10 best Texas Rangers games of the 2010s

#6: Adrian Beltre collects his 3,000th hit (July 30, 2017)

I intentionally wanted to avoid games the Rangers lost on this list, because they have lost plenty of enjoyable baseball games through the years, but Adrian Beltre outrules all other rules.

I think if you asked any Ranger fan who their favorite player in club history was, it’s a pretty safe bet Adrian is at the top of the list. He brought class, professionalism, and joy to the game, and even at the Rangers lowest points during the 2017-18 playoff-less seasons, you could still tune in just to soak in some of that pure love that he had for playing the game.

Beltre loved DFW, and DFW loved Beltre. It was a perfect marriage of baseball fan and player for nearly a full decade, and although the Rangers were not very threatening in 2017 and ultimately lost this game 10-6, to see Beltre collect such a milestone of a hit after (at the time) seven gritty seasons cornering the infield here was a joy for all of us.

The 10 best Texas Rangers games of the 2010s

#4: 2010 ALDS Game 5: Rangers 5, Rays 1

I don’t want to speak for any of you, but this is the game when I really knew we had a chance.

I remember being in school and all of our teachers were kind enough to let us watch these games during class. The Rangers had never, EVER won a postseason series before. 38 years of baseball in Texas, and we were this close to seeing a playoff advancement for the first time… ever.

And the Rangers did not disappoint. Cliff Lee was purely stellar in this series against Tampa, and to close it out he went all the way, fanning eleven batters and only allowing six hits in a complete game effort. The Rangers bats did just enough to back him up, with Ian Kinsler sealing the game with a 2-run home run in the top of the ninth. Getting a win in this series meant that the Rangers weren’t just in the playoffs, they were COMPETING in the playoffs. This wasn’t just a feel-good story.

The 10 best Texas Rangers games of the 2010s

#3: 2011 World Series Game 4: Rangers 4, Cardinals 0

The Derek Holland game.

You could put this at number 2 or even 1 on this list and I would have no issue with it at all. This game is probably the one I revisit the most from this era of Rangers baseball.

Holland fleeced the Cardinals in Game 4. 2 hits in 8 and a third innings. 7 strikeouts on 116 pitches. No runs allowed. Easily the greatest postseason pitching performance in club history. A bounce back from a deflating beatdown at the hands of Albert Pujols in Game 3. The Rangers winning this game meant they had a chance to fight in the series, but the Rangers winning this game BECAUSE of what Dutch Oven did is what gave them a chance at being literally seconds away from winning the whole thing.

The 10 best Texas Rangers games of the 2010s

#2: 2011 World Series Game 5: Rangers 4, Cardinals 2

Ah yes, the final game of the 2011 World Series.

Well, for our memories’ sake, anyway. But what a game this was. I remember reading somewhere recently that Lance Berkman thinks St. Louis should have swept this series and I find that comment so laughable. First the Derek Holland game, and then Mike Napoli staking his claim at what should’ve been his World Series MVP.

The last World Series game Texas has won to this day had everything you could ask for as a baseball fan. St. Louis jumped out to an early 2-0 lead, and the Rangers countered with Moreland and Beltre homers in the third and sixth innings respectively, but the game came down to the eighth inning when Mike Napoli drove in two runs on a double into the right-center gap that gave Texas a 4-2 lead.

Have I gone back and watched this game just to feel something in moments of existential dread? Countless times. I know we were one strike away twice in Game 6, but the thrilling feeling of “We’re doing it!!! We’re doing it!!!” as Napoli gunned down Allen Craig after Neftali struck out Pujols… man, I KNOW it stings, but what a thrilling feeling that was. We were that close.

The 10 best Texas Rangers games of the 2010s

#1: 2010 ALCS Game 6: Rangers 6, Yankees 2 (October 22, 2010)

Enough World Series PTSD.

On the very day that I turned 14 years old, the Texas Rangers advanced to the World Series for the first time as Neftali Feliz hung Alex Rodriguez out to dry with a nasty curveball called for the final strike. Poetic justice. Not just for myself, but for the millions of fans throughout Texas and beyond, who had sat through years of torture, letdown, and mistakes. The largest contract in sports history given to a player who stayed here for 3 years and didn’t make a postseason appearance. The Yankees dominance of the late 90s Rangers teams. The years of having great hitting but awful pitching, or vice versa.

This game has a very bittersweet aftertaste for Rangers fans. It marks the high point of the franchise, yes, but it also is just that – the high point. We can talk about the disappointments of that era of Rangers baseball all day long.

We can continue to harp on what could’ve been, those 2009-2012 years being nothing but continuous joy and excitement for all fans of the sport in the DFW metroplex. Rangers baseball meant something. There was an electricity throughout North Texas that I can’t wait to feel again. I’ve been happy plenty of times with the results of many Rangers successes since. I was elated to cheer them to another pennant in 2011. I was pleasantly surprised when the 2015 club overachieved and won the division. I absolutely adored the emergence of Joey Gallo as one of the game’s most unique and lovable players.

But nothing has come close to the pure thrill of that final strike from Game 6 of the 2010 ALCS.