Texas Rangers’ perplexing first half ends with one more surprise: Things are trending up

HOUSTON — There are two ways to look at the just completed first half of the Rangers’ season. One is the obvious view from 30,000 feet. It has been the most perplexing, confounding, frustrating and agonizing first half, maybe in team history when expectations are taken into account.

“You can say ‘buffaloed,’ too,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said.

OK, Boch. They were buffaloed. But we feel like we should say it in Yosemite Sam’s voice.

The other observation is a little more granular and goes like this after a 5-1 win over Houston Sunday: Things are trending up. Both theories can, in fact, be true. The Rangers have underachieved, particularly on offense, and yet, they’ve actually held their own in an insanely difficult stretch loaded with road games leading up to the All-Star break.

Rangers

The win Sunday finished off a three-city, 10-game road trip at 5-5 and concluded with a road series win at Houston. They’ve gone 16-14 over their last 30 games and went 19-18 over the final 37 games of the first half, which featured 25 road games. It was not a stretch in which survival meant success. They weren’t going to climb right back into a playoff race, but they certainly could have knocked themselves out.

In the last week, their offense, the bane of their first half existence, has shown its most consistency of the season, scoring four or more runs in seven consecutive games. Over the last 20 games, the Rangers .719 OPS is finally tipped over league average (.716). Most importantly, it’s added up to runs. The Rangers have scored 114 runs – an average of 5.7 per game – which are the most they’ve scored in any 20-game stretch this season. They are about as automatic as it comes when they get to four runs; they are 36-10.

“I’ve said even before today’s game, they’re fighting back,” manager Bruce Bochy said with a noted energy in his voice and not just because he was going to make his flight home to Nashville on time to relax over the break. “I couldn’t be prouder of the way they fought back. They had a tough loss [Saturday] and came back on the last day of a long road trip. There are some tired guys out there. So the break couldn’t come at a better time.

“This was a defining kind of trip against good teams and good pitching and I love the grit they are showing.”

A night after they struck out 19 times without a walk and went 2 for 17 with runners in scoring position in a 10-inning walkoff loss, the Rangers executed when they needed to.

After Wyatt Langford took a leadoff walk in the second, Evan Carter ripped a ball into the right field corner for a run-scoring triple. With two outs in the inning, Ezequiel Duran broke an 0-for-the-road-trip skid by lifting a soft liner just inside the right field line to get the second run home. In the fourth, Alejandro Osuna executed a sacrifice fly to make sure a leadoff double by Carter didn’t go to waste. Adolis García and Marcus Semien, both of whom have rebounded after two awful months, each homered. If they aren’t careful, they will push their OPS over .700 by the end of next week.

The easy thing to say would be: The rest belonged to Nathan Eovaldi. He should not get second billing. The offense has simply been a bigger concern. Eovaldi needed to carry a load on Sunday for a fatigued bullpen and did just that, allowing only one run in 7 ⅔ innings to lower his ERA to 1.58. It would be the lowest in the majors by nearly half a run, but he falls six innings shy of qualifying.

He and Jacob deGrom allowed the division-leading Astros three runs over 13 ⅔ innings over the weekend, more evidence that this team has the starting pitching to win a playoff series or two. But they’ve got to get there first.

“He knew the situation,” Bochy said. “He knew how badly we needed it. He’s such a team player and competitor. He knew that the bullpen was depleted. He put us on his shoulders and carried us.”

Said Eovaldi: “I know where we are at. I know the significance of this series.”

Any doubt about that, then the first inning told the story. He made a mistake on the first pitch of the game, allowing Isaac Paredes to slam a fastball off the top of the wall, just inches from being a homer. Given the chance to escape the inning, he worked around Cam Smith, got a double play grounder from Jose Altuve and then got some help on a sprawling catch by Carter on a sinking liner. It was the only help he needed.

It was a good way to end the half. The Rangers still have an uphill climb in the second half with the fifth-toughest strength of schedule in the majors, according to Tankathon. But they also have more home games (36) remaining than any team in the AL and significantly more than a number of teams ahead of them in the standings. There is ample opportunity to create the extended hot stretch that has eluded this team so far this season.

They have 65 games remaining. Based on last year’s win totals for playoff teams, the Rangers probably need to get to 86 or 87 wins. That would require going something like 38-27 in the second half. It’s still a tall task. They haven’t had that successful a 65-game stretch since the end of the World Series. For the Rangers that’s looking too far down the road. At the moment, they are moving in the right direction.

“We aren’t thinking about the bad days,” Semien said. “We are just trying to build on the good ones. We had some good ones on this road trip. Some days they had better days than us, so those were tough losses, but we’re fighting better late in games. That’s something we need to do. And if we get everybody healthy and rolling, it’s still a good offense. We got off to a slow start, but it’s a long year and we can continue to get better and better.”

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