It really feels like this was a weekend of missed opportunities for the Yankees. They easily could have left San Diego with a sweep, or at least having taken two of three from the Padres. Instead, they head home with only Saturday\u2019s win to show for their weekend. And in the process, they let Boston creep closer and failed to gain ground on Tampa.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, it is starting to look like the race for the final Wild Card spot could come down to three teams: whomever out of Cleveland and the White Sox doesn\u2019t win the AL Central, whomever out of Houston and Texas doesn\u2019t win the AL West, and the Blue Jays. The rest of the American League\u2019s pretenders sit at least four games out of the final playoff spot, with multiple teams in front of them.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay Rays (85-58) 6, Texas Rangers (71-73) 8<\/p>\n
I guess it could have been worse. And would have, if not for Jake Burger. There\u2019s a Burger King joke here somewhere, but I am not clever enough to think of it. Burger cracked pair of home runs, helping Texas come back from an early 5-1 deficit. The Rangers scored six in the fourth and fifth innings to take the lead and managed to hold on for a much-needed win, as they try to stay in the hunt in both the AL West and Wild Card races.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re a fan of great pitching, this was not the game for you. Each team burned through six pitchers, with not a single one recording more than nine outs. Gross. Texas\u2019 win, however, prevents Tampa from going five games up on the Yankees, who already face a steep challenge trying to make up a four-game deficit in the AL East as the season rapidly approaches a close.<\/p>\n
Boston Red Sox (79-65)3, Baltimore Orioles (69-75) 1: You only really need to know two names from today\u2019s game and they\u2019re both Red Sox. In the top of the second, Eli White stepped to the dish with a pair of runners on. His three-run home run gave Boston a lead they never surrendered. And they can thank Payton Tolle for much of that. The hefty lefty spun six innings of one-run ball for Beantown, striking out 12 Orioles along the way. Former Yankee Aroldis Chapman came in for the ninth and recorded the final three outs, in the process notching his 400th career save. Chapman is the ninth man all-time to reach that milestone.<\/p>\n
Chicago White Sox (75-68) 10, Minnesota Twins (68-75) 1: You\u2019d never know it by the final score but for the first half of this game, it looked like \u201cfirst run wins.\u201d Then Chicago scored the first run. And nine more. So in a way, first run did win. Of note for Yankee fans: remember Randal Grichuk? The longtime Yankee killer hit .194 with nary a home run in 16 games in pinstripes. His eighth-inning longball was his 12th of the year and it pushes his OPS with the Pale Hose over .900 in 183 AB. An outcome both enraging and so incredibly predictable.<\/p>\n
Houston Astros (73-71) 2, Arizona Diamondbacks (76-68) 3: I cannot describe how much I am going to hate it if Houston makes the playoff with 84 wins and then goes on a deep run. Eduardo Rodriguez and Arizona did their job Sunday to try and prevent that. Rodriguez threw six frames of one-run ball, earning his 15th win of the season in the process. For Houston, presumptive AL MVP Yordan Alvarez was up to his usual tricks, bashing his 38th homer of the season. He continues to lead (or share in the lead) for each of the Triple Crown categories as well, though an MLB Triple Crown seems a longshot at this point.<\/p>\n
Cleveland Guardians (73-71) 3, Detroit Tigers (65-78) 2 (F\/10): Apparently Guards Ball is now when Cleveland keeps it close at home, gets the game to extra innings, and walks it off for the win. Sunday marked their third such game of the weekend, this time with Daniel Schneemann providing the heroics on with a tenth inning single. In a \u201cyou can\u2019t predict baseball, Suzyn\u201d anecdote\u2026 at no point this weekend did Cleveland ever lead one of their games prior to walking each one off. Wild. Oh, and Gavin Williams notched double-digit strikeouts again. Ho hum. That\u2019s eight of his last 11 starts.<\/p>\n
Toronto Blue Jays (72-72) 1, Kansas City Royals (64-80) 6: Maybe Spencer Arrighetti just isn\u2019t good. I remember being surprised at the deadline that the Astros of all teams would trade away young, controllable starting pitching. I\u2019m increasingly less surprised. After getting shelled on Sunday, Arrighetti has allowed 14 ER in 15.2 IP since becoming a Blue Jay. That\u2019s \u201cgood\u201d for an 8.04 ERA. Yikes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It really feels like this was a weekend of missed opportunities for the Yankees. They easily could have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2393],"tags":[5,4,3537,149,38398,1567,69,3240],"class_list":["post-799539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas-rangers","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-news","tag-rangers","tag-rivalry-roundup","tag-texas","tag-texas-rangers","tag-texasrangers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117234090845968954","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}