The Texas Rangers start a three game series in Arlington tonight against the Houston Astros.

Somehow, the Rangers are still alive in the playoff race. This is despite being 18-25 in one run games this year, being 11 games back in the division at one point, and being three games under .500 as recently as August 21. Despite having a rancid decaying corpse of an offense for the first couple of months of the season, and despite currently having Corey Seager, Marcus Semien and Evan Carter all on the injured list, and Adolis Garcia not being on the injured list simply because rosters expanded in September and Justin Foscue is the only position player on the 40 man roster who is healthy and not already in the majors and it isn’t like Foscue would get to play anyway. Despite Nathan Eovaldi’s season likely being over and Tyler Mahle being on the injured list and Patrick Corbin turning into a pumpkin and Jacob Latz filling in as the team’s fifth starter.

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What makes this all the more painful is that the Rangers have the third best run differential in the American League currently. Their +90 RD trails just the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. Their actual record of 72-69 is nine wins worse than their Pythagorean won/loss record of 81-60. 81-60, just so you know, even if maybe you’d rather not, would have them tied with Detroit for the second-best record in the A.L., a half-game behind Toronto.

Texas is currently five games back of Houston in the American League West race, and 1.5 games back of Seattle for the third Wild Card spot. And while they are obviously closer to the Mariners than the Astros, I kind of feel like Houston is the more realistic target for the Rangers to run down, by virtue of the fact that Texas has six games remaining against the Astros, which makes it easier for them to catch Houston, and they will have the tiebreaker advantage against Houston if they just split those six remaining games, whereas Seattle has the tiebreaker advantage over Texas.

Of course, if the Rangers simply split those six games against Houston, their chances of catching Houston drop dramatically, as each team only has 15 games remaining against teams other than each other, and thus the Rangers would have to be 5 games better than Houston in those 15 games. Of those 15 games, Houston has three games apiece in Toronto, in Atlanta, at home against Seattle, in Sacramento, and in Anaheim. So on the plus side, Houston only has six home games remaining, compared to 15 road games, but on the other hand, their final week is road games against teams with nothing to play for.

Houston has not been on fire of late, either, having gone 15-17 since August 1. That they are still 3.5 games up on Seattle right now despite that is a tribute to the craptacular recent play of the M’s, who are 6-14 in their last 20 games. Seattle is playing three games in Atlanta this weekend, and will finish the season with six games at home, three against the Rockies and three against the Dodgers, so we probably want to hope for the National League West race to remain tight headed into the final weekend.

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I don’t want to make arbitrary declarations, to say things like “the Rangers have to sweep Houston to stay in the race” or something like that, because the Rangers could lose 2 of 3 against the Astros, and the Mariners could get swept and Texas would then be a game closer to Seattle in the Wild Card race, though they could also be behind Kansas City and Tampa Bay at that point, as those two clubs are just a half game behind Texas right now.

But it is fair to say that this series against Houston is kind of a big deal. The Rangers’ playoffs chances would be much enhanced by a strong showing in this series, and yes, they are having to rely on the likes of Michael Helman and Rowdy Tellez and Cody Freeman and Alejandro Osuna and Ezequiel Duran to contribute to that strong showing, and that is not the sort of thing that fills one with confidence, but as Joaquin Andujar once said, if you were to pick one word to some up baseball, it would be “You never know.”