Rangers-Athletics series final in Sacramento perhaps the wackiest game you'll see in 2026

Northern California has a mind of its own when it comes to the wind and Thursday afternoon in Sacramento was no different.

With wind gusts at 15+ mph, the Rangers and Athletics took the field for the end of their four-game series before Texas heads off to Seattle for another West Coast divisional matchup.

Good news is that the game ended in a 9-6 Rangers win, evening the series up 2-2, but it wasn't pretty by any means.

Sacramento wind had a mind of its own in Thursday's baseball matinee

From the first ball in play, the wind was showcasing that it would not make it easy. While Brandon Nimmo did fly out to Tyler Soderstrom in left field, it took the 2025 Gold Glove finalist an extra five to six sprinting strides after the wind altered the ball's trajectory at least another 10 feet forward.

Perhaps the biggest victim of the wind was the A's first baseman Nick Kurtz, who in the bottom of the first, took an 89 mph changeup from Jack Leiter 102 mph off the bat to centerfield with a bat sound that have should have left Wyatt Langford staring at the ball go over the fence. Instead, Langford took a few steps back and caught the ball a good 40 to 50 feet from the warning track.

It meant both teams had to get strategic with how they went about scoring runs and small ball was the answer. Texas scored the game's first two runs on line drives, ground ball singles and a sacrifice fly while the A's did so with doubles and two singles off the bat at 69 and 88 mph.

Really the only hard-hit ball that had positive impact was Josh Jung's 99 mph fly ball at a nearly 40 degree launch angle that traveled just over the right field wall for a two-run home run and gave Texas a 5-3 lead in the seventh inning.

Texas was close to done for after the A's eighth inning consisted of a three-run double by Kurtz that landed in short left field after it took Langford hectically sprinting as the ball dropped in front of him.

Game like this builds Rangers' character, resilience

First off, let's hope the players get a good night's sleep in their hotel in Seattle and wake up ready to take on the Mariners, a team that Texas swept last weekend.

There's something to be said about winning a game with a lot of twists and turns. Especially a fourth game of the series, following a night game and in the middle of three-city road trip.

Texas ended up coming back twice in the final three innings of the ballgame. Once in the seventh thanks to Jung's homer that broke the 3-3 tie and then in the four run ninth inning following the unfortunate Kurtz double in the previous half inning.

Now, the Rangers head to the Pacific Northwest for almost a complete rematch of last weekend's first meeting of the season with the Mariners. It will begin with a a Jacob deGrom-Logan Gilbert matchup. Let's hope deGrom is old fashioned deGrom and Texas finds a way to defeat the demon that is T-Mobile Park.

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