PHOENIX — This is just how it goes for the wholly changed Rangers these days. Nothing fazes them. They get stranded overnight after an aborted takeoff, fly on the day of the game, don’t take batting practice to conserve energy, allow homers to the first two hitters they face, lose another player to an injury and roll on to another win.
On Monday, the Rangers extended their winning streak to six games with their biggest road comeback of the year, a 7-5 10-inning win over Arizona.
We’ll get to the Adolis García injury news in a minute, but first, this team is just too busy winning to spend a lot of time fretting over injuries. They lose a guy, they win another game. Just the usual routine.
Texas Rangers’ Cody Freeman hits an RBI single against the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 10th inning of a baseball game, Monday, Sept. 1, 2025, in Phoenix.
Rick Scuteri / AP
Rangers
About the win, they did it just how you would expect. Which is, of course, sarcasm. The team that was supposed to slug engineered it with lots of tough at-bats from guys who were never supposed to play a role on this team.
Cody Freeman, who seems to skip to the bases with elation, got them back in the game with a homer in the third, then tied it in the ninth with a two-out, two-strike opposite-field single on a sweeper down and away.
“He wasn’t going to get me out,” Freeman said later, offering the kind of cockiness that hasn’t emanated from the clubhouse in months, if not years. “I love big moments like that. Give me more of it.”
Alejandro Osuna, who had two singles and one RBI since July 4, gave them the lead in the 10th with a two-out, two-run single off the backside of reliever Juan Burgos. The second run, scored by Ezequiel Duran on a head-first slide, was initially not counted, but a replay review showed Duran’s oven mitt had touched the plate ahead of a diving tag. Duran had reached by a walk. Of course, it was his seventh walk in nearly 170 plate appearances this season. This is a different team.
“A huge game for the kids,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “They came through in a big way. We had two outs, two strikes. Freeman does a good job of putting it in play. I mean, it doesn’t get more clutch than that. And Osuna, hasn’t played in a while, gets up there and ends up knocking in two. A great job by the kids, by everybody. I don’t know who didn’t do something to help us win this ball game.”
The game also featured some nice returns. Jake Burger, the one Ranger who did taking batting practice — by playing in an unofficial minor league “Bridge League” game in 105 degree heat in Surprise in the morning — returning to the active roster and crushing the first pitch he saw for a run-scoring pinch-hit triple that set up Freeman’s game-tying hit. Chris Martin, back from two months on the IL, pitched the bottom of the ninth in a tie game, apparently Bochy’s version of a “soft landing spot.”
And, of course, the daily ritual sacrifice of a perfectly good player’s health. García hustled to stay out of a double play in the ninth inning and just beat the throw, but felt a tweak in his left quadriceps. He stayed in the game to jog around the bases and score on Burger’s triple, but did not return for the bottom of the ninth. Bochy said García would have MRI imaging on Tuesday and the Rangers would, well, soldier on. What’s new? This team has lost: Marcus Semien, Evan Carter, Nathan Eovaldi, Jon Gray and Corey Seager in the last 10 days. What’s one more?
García declined to comment on his status after the game.
What’s more: the Rangers have won six straight, tying their longest winning streak of the year and they’ve clinched a winning road trip for the first time since late May. All nice superlatives, but of no real consequence at this point other than the fact it’s helped them climb back to within 1 ½ games of the final AL Wild Card spot, currently held by the Seattle Mariners.
“I keep saying it, how well they have shown resilience and gone through the tough times,” Bochy said. “Last night, I’ve never been through what they had to go through [on the takeoff aborted over a mechanical issue]. But we got here, nobody was talking about it, nobody’s complaining about it, and they came out and fought hard. And they scratched and clawed to get back in it. They showed fight.”
Yep, this is a changed team.
Adolis García exits Rangers’ game vs. Diamondbacks with lower body injuryReinforcements on the way for Rangers as Tyler Mahle, Cole Winn, Sam Haggerty eye returns
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