Rangers focus on taking advantage of home field
ARLINGTON, Texas — The Texas Rangers have played only four home games over the past month, and lost all three in the AL Championship Series.
Yet, there they were back at Globe Life Field on Wednesday getting ready to host Game 1 of the World Series against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
So is it really home-field advantage for a team that’s already matched a postseason record by winning its first eight road games?
“We love playing here,” All-star catcher Jonah Heim said before the Rangers worked out. “Throughout the whole year, we’ve played pretty good at home.”
Except against the Houston Astros, which is why the Rangers went into these playoffs as a wild-card team that didn’t have home-field advantage until now.
Texas and Arizona both had to win Games 6 and 7 of their respective League Championship Series on the road to get to the World Series. That had never happened in both LCS matchups since those series expanded to a best-of-seven format in 1985. But it set up the third World Series matching wildcard teams.
“We’ve both played in tough environments. It’s kind of been the theme all postseason of the road teams have been playing really well,” Texas second baseman Marcus Semien said. “That’s just how it’s gone this year for whatever reason. But the focus now for us is playing well at home.”
Take away the Rangers’ 1-9 record at home this season against Houston, including those ALCS games last week, and they are 5025 against everybody else they’ve hosted. They won their only other playoff game at Globe Life Field, completing a three-game sweep of Baltimore in the Division Series.
The Rangers have home-field advantage in the World Series because their 90 wins in the regular season were six more than Arizona had.
When the Rangers played their regular-season home finale Sept.
24, they had seven road games left and controlled their own playoff destiny. But they went 3-4 on that final trip, losing 1-0 at Seattle on the final day of the season to squander the division crown to Houston.
“It was tough. It was rough for us,” rookie third baseman Josh Jung said of that last trip before the playoffs. “I don’t know what switched or what turned on. But it was just this mentality that we were kind of playing hero ball in Seattle.
“Where you see it this postseason, it’s just pass the baton to the next guy. Have the best at-bat you can, the next guy’s going to do it. We’re not worried about being the hero.”
Texas was 50-31 at Globe Life Field during the regular season, with only Tampa Bay, the Dodgers and Atlanta winning more home games.
“Once we saw what the NLCS matchup was, we knew if we win our pennant we get home field, and here we are,” Semien said. “It’s great for the fans. It’s great for us. We’ve learned throughout the losses in the (ALCS) that maybe we need to keep our emotions a little calmer in the big moments.”