For long-suffering club, worth their wait in gold
PHOENIX — Zac Gallen was noble. He was pugnacious, tenacious and for a while darn near perfect.
At the end of a long year in which no one threw more innings, Gallen found a reserve of greatness that nearly extended the Diamondbacks’ season. But Nathan Eovaldi met greatness with grit. He faced another clinching game and did what he always has done — made sure his team was spraying champagne afterward. ”We knew we had the right guy out there,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. Eovaldi had a Van Wyck at rush hour Game 5 — facing unrelenting traffic. Yet he never crashed. Pitching as if one run against might beat him, he delivered one clutch pitch after another Wednesday night. He did that long enough and well enough so that when Gallen showed his lone glitch within a splendid Game 5 pitching duel, it was enough — finally — for the Rangers to be the last team standing in a season. “You want to throw up zeroes until your team scores — and that is what happened,” Eovaldi said.
So it happened at last — a Ranger year.
They had the magic that escaped them in 2011 when they were twice one strike away in World Series Game 6 from the franchise’s first title and ended up losing that game and that series in seven games. This year they went on the road for 11 postseason games — and won every one of them. They lost their thundering cleanup hitter, Adolis Garcia, to an oblique injury in Game 3. Then clinched the elusive championship by getting their only run against Gallen on an RBI single from Mitch Garver — from the cleanup spot.
In the EovaldiGallen staredown that was the only run until the ninth, when the Rangers erupted for four runs against closer Paul Sewald to win 5-0. Thus, the franchise that began in 1961 as the Washington Senators won it all thanks to a spending spree that brought — among others — Eovaldi, World Series MVP Corey Seager and Marcus Semien, whose two-run homer in the ninth provided an exclamation point. It also brought (close your eyes here, New York baseball fans) Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer, who did not do the heaviest lifting but will get a ring they could not bring to the Mets.
Aroldis Chapman got big outs in the clincher and will get his second ring. Jordan Montgomery, so big all postseason, will head into free agency as a champion.
Bochy goes into rarefied air with Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel, Connie Mack, Walter Alston and Joe Torre as the only managers with at least four championships.
Seager joined Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax and Reggie Jackson as the only two-time World Series MVPs — like Jackson, doing it with two different clubs. He was part of GM Chris Young’s vision to aggressively — in spending and trades — attempt to end a six-decade-plus hex.
“This group came together unlike any group I’ve ever seen and special things happened because of it,” Young said.
This championship leaves the Brewers, Mariners, Padres, Rays and Rockies as the only current teams to never win it all.
The finale of the 119th World Series stood in contrast to the pitching sacrilege that was Game 4. Arizona started a lefty relief specialist, Joe Mantiply, and teetered on having to use a position player to pitch. And somehow the Diamondbacks used fewer pitchers (6) than the Rangers (7) and threw fewer pitches (166-152). All in all, it was a 318-pitch, 18-run, 23-hit abomination to the memory of Gibson and Koufax as the Rangers won 11-7 to go up three-games-to-one.
Gallen did not appear as if he were ready to be a weight lifter. He threw 210 innings in the regular season — second most in the majors — and another 27 ¹/₃ innings this postseason going into Game 5. A Cy Young front-runner for most of the season, he had a 5.06 ERA after Aug. 7, which included surrendering three runs in five innings in World Series Game 1.
Yet, he was perfect for 4 2/₃ innings Wednesday and had a no-hitter through six. Texas abetted by putting the ball in play on the first pitch six times resulting in six groundouts. Thus, Arizona’s ace had just 72 pitches through six innings.
But Seager dribbled an oppositefield grounder to left to open the seventh and close the no-hitter. Evan Carter doubled and Garver — who at the end of the 2022 lockout was traded from Minnesota to Texas for Isiah Kiner-Falefa (who was then redirected to the Yankees) — lined an RBI single up the middle.
By that point, Eovaldi had concluded his six innings. The leadoff man got on in the first three. The Diamondbacks had at least one runner in scoring position in each of the first five innings. But Eovaldi held the Rangers to 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position. In four postseason clinching starts, Eovaldi is now 4-0 with a 1.08 ERA.
He said he came last offseason on a two-year, $34 million freeagent deal because he was attracted to the focus and fervor the organization had to win. And it did finally happen. The Rangers were the last team standing.