Texas Rangers News: Winning, sluggers return to form, bullpen is last week's MVP

It's been a heck of a week for the Texas Rangers locking up their third straight series win after a weekend sweep of the Chicago White Sox and a return to .500 baseball.

Texas closed out the week with a 5-1 record and the offense took off, scoring 53 runs in their last eight games, dating back to June 7 against the Washington Nationals. All backed by an unreal stretch from Evan Carter, a seven-game hit streak by Josh Smith and strong pitching.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

Winners of seven of their last eight games, their third straight series win and coming off a sweep, the Rangers have clawed back to the .500 mark at 36-36 heading into Monday's off day. In this stretch, we've seen the Rangers outscore their opponents 53-21, thanks to two 16-run outbursts against Minnesota.

Carter is hitting .500 with three homers and 7 RBIs in his last seven games, Smith is hitting .419 with 13 hits and 10 runs scored, Marcus Semien is batting .310 with a .344 OBP, Adolis Garcia has a .321 average and Corey Seager has walked in nine straight games.

Add in the reliable pitching the Rangers have had all season, Texas is firmly back in control of their own destiny in the AL West. They get a day off Monday before welcoming the Kansas City Royals to Arlington on Tuesday.

Rangers' sluggers are returning to All-Star form

The success for the Rangers was always gong to be determined by how their big bats performed. It's why they got into an early hole this season and it's no shock that their recent success has been due to their breakout.

While it's good that the majority of the lineup is clicking all at the same time. It was never going to make that turnaround if Garcia and Semien were going to continue to struggle. Now here we are in the midst of the Rangers' best stretch of the season and both players have been tremendous.

In June, Semien is slashing .348/.412/.652 with a 1.064 OPS with 16 hits, 3 homers, 8 RBIs, 5 doubles and 11 runs scored. Most recently, he's on an eight-game hit streak dating back June 7 in Washington.

As for Garcia, after the outfielder was benched for a couple of games following the May 26-28 series against Toronto, the 32-year-old has recorded at least one hit in nine of his last 11 games and recorded the walk-off single on Saturday.

Bullpen has been the real MVP lately

Ever since Eovaldi went down and Kumar Rocker's start in Tampa Bay didn't go as smoothly as Bruce Bochy was hoping, the coaching staff has had to navigate a handful of bullpen games to adjust for a few holes in the rotation.

It started on June 8 when Jacob Latz acted as the opener in the series finale against Washington and threw 3 1/3 innings of 2 hit, 2 run and 7 strikeout ball and the Rangers took the win 4-2 to grab a series win. Then Shawn Armstrong pitched three perfect innings to open the game that ended in Friday's 3-1 win over the White Sox.

Outside of the two bullpen games, the bullpen put in countless innings of work that has kept Texas into games and have played a big role in getting the Rangers to 5-1 this week.