Rangers' season effectively ends in most annoying way possible

It's really not hard to believe that the Texas Rangers are effectively just playing out the string, starting on Thursday. After all, there aren't many teams that would be able to withstand the loss of a Cy Young candidate pitcher, their starting shortstop and second baseman (who are two of their best hitters), and their starting center fielder all in the span of a couple of weeks and expect to stay in the playoff race.

Then throw in the three bid trade deadline acquisitions being some variation of bad and/or injured, and that the Rangers started the week just two games out of the Wild Card and AL West race is amazing. That doesn't really blunt the pain of the Houston Astros of all teams, being the ones who effectively ended Texas' season.

The Texas Rangers came into this series knowing they needed to take two of three at least, and preferably sweep, to make a statement. Instead, they were swept. And to add insult to injury, they were swept without much of a fight.

The Texas Rangers hopes for the postseason effectively ended on Wednesday night

Sure, they scored 4 runs in the eighth inning on Tuesday night, but before that frame, they trailed 6-1. Hard to feel they battled to the end when they laid such a massive egg against a hated division rival with the season on the line.

The apparent inevitability of the season coming to an end was underlined on Wednesday night when they lost 5-2, thanks in no small part to Jacob deGrom getting hit around the park once again. The veteran pitcher can't really be blamed; this is the longest season he's had in years. But the degree to which his arm has clearly run out of juice was on display yet again when he allowed 5 runs in 5 innings.

Keep this in mind: deGrom had an earned run average of 2.13 on July 1. By the time he left his latest start, his ERA was 3.01 on the season. He hasn't been awful by any stretch, but he wasn't as dominant as he was earlier in the season.

The loss means the Rangers are now 5 full games behind the Astros with 9 games to go in the season. They are also 4.5 games behind the Mariners and Boston Redsox for the last Wild Card spot.

If that wasn't bad enough, just as Bruce Bochy's squad has hit the skids, the Cleveland Guardians stayed hot. The Texas Rangers are now two full games behind the team hoping to squeeze into the postseason. That, as they say, is almost certainly that. It's time to turn the page and start looking towards 2026.