Taking a look back at the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles during the regular season

The Rangers ride again

A little more than a month later, Texas would head to Baltimore and try to settle the score. The Rangers entered play for game one with a three-game lead in the AL West standings while Baltimore faced a three-game deficit behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the AL East. Needless to say, both teams had a lot riding on the series already, even at this early point of the season. As far as rotations, the Rangers would send out Gray, Heaney, and Cody Bradford while Baltimore offered Rodriguez, Dean Kremer, and Bradish.

Baltimore took a quick lead in the opener on an Adley Rutschman solo homer in the first. But the Rangers countered in the next half inning with a two-run blast from Leody Taveras. Rodriguez then seemed poised through the third, registering a shut-down inning. But then came the fourth inning and the Rangers offense.

The next three events happened on back-to-back-to-back pitches. Jung hit a one out triple to get the ball rolling, followed by an RBI single by Josh Smith. Then, on the third straight pitch, Robbie Grossman belted a two-run blast to extend the lead to 5 to 1 in favor of Texas. To continue the events, Taveras would walk, Sandy León would single, and Marcus Semien would get on base via a fielding error to load the bases. On the very next pitch, Corey Seager unloaded them with a monstrous no-doubt grand slam to dead center. Needless to say, Texas took game one by a final score of 12 to 2.

Game two was a little more subdued, but still featured fantastic pitching from Heaney, who lasted seven innings while allowing just one run on four hits. The Texas offense cruised to an eventual 5 to 3 victory by manufacturing runs the old-fashioned way.

The Orioles finally evened the season series and avoided a sweep of their own in game three. But it might have been the most exciting game out of all six, featuring great pitching from both sides and some overall enjoyable baseball. By the series end, each team had three wins to their ledger and three losses, with the Rangers holding the edge in overall scoring by a margin of 26 to19.

Next: How have the teams changed?