Thoughts on a 4-2 Rangers win

Rangers 4, Twins 2

• Well will you look at that? The Rangers won a game.
• That breaks the 8 game losing streak the Rangers had been on, and gets them to 80 wins for the season.
• There’s a big semantic difference between 80 wins and 81 wins and 82 wins in a season. An 80 win season is a losing record. An 82 win season is a winning record. An 81 win season is neither a winning record nor a losing record, and thus can be lumped with either group, depending on how you phrase things and the point you are trying to make. Its like an ace, able to be high or low depending on your needs.
• So the Rangers still need to win one more game to ensure they don’t have a losing record this season, and two more games to have a winning record.
• That said, when you are looking at a seasonal results, 80 looks better. It blends in with the other 80-something win seasons, looks like a decent year, in contrast to, for example, the Rangers’ 78 wins seasons in 2017 and 2019, which at first glance look no different than a 71 win disappointment.
• Jacob deGrom was excellent in his final start of the season. He allowed a Byron Buxton homer to lead off the game, and the next batter, Kody Clemens, barreled a ball that went for a fly out but would have left 13 of 30 parks, per Statcast. deGrom settled down after that, though, and allowed just two baserunners — a walk and a single — otherwise in his five innings of work. deGrom ended up needing just 74 pitches to get through those five innings, and generated 16 swinging strikes.
• This is the second game in a row where the team whose leadoff hitter hit a homer to begin their half of the first inning lost the game.
• Robert Garcia pitched a pair of shutout innings, Shawn Armstrong allowed a run in the eighth, and Phil Maton closed it out in the ninth.
• The offense for both sides was pretty feckless, with Statcast showing a .199 xBA for the Twins and a .202 xBA for the Rangers. Each team had just five hits apiece, each team had one homer apiece, each team had one double apiece. The Rangers had four walks to the Twins’ one, so that’s something.
• The Rangers’ homer was by Josh Smith, who has faded badly the last couple of months. This was Smith’s first homer since July 27 — in the 50 games since then, he’s slashed .206/.303/.273.
• The other three runs scored in a weird seventh inning. Ezequiel Duran had a one out single and stole second. Billy McKinney singled home Duran. Jonah Heim singled, putting runners at the corners. A wild pitch scored McKinney and sent Heim to second, then a Michael Helman ground out advanced Heim to third. An intentional walk to Adolis Garcia (pinch hitting for Joc Pederson) and an unintentional walk to Josh Smith loaded the bases with two outs for Josh Jung, who saw the first pitch thrown to him go by for another wild pitch, allowing the fourth run to score.
• So yeah, 60% of the Rangers’ hits came in that one inning, and they still needed wild pitches to score two of the runs.
• Jacob deGrom hit 99.4 mph with his fastball, averaging 97.5 mph. Robert Garcia reached 94.7 mph with his fastball. Shawn Armstrong touched 93.2 mph with his fastball. Phil Maton’s sinker maxed out at 91.6 mph.
• Josh Smith’s home run was 100.6 mph off the bat. That was the only 100+ mph exit velocity for the Rangers.
• Texas now will try to win the home finale to ensure a .500 season and win their final home series of the year, in a game I was supposed to go to but can’t because I have to work. Bah.