TEXAS SWEEPS PAST TAMPA BAY
Rangers 7, Rays 1
Two years after losing 102 games, the resilient Texas Rangers are savoring a journey that’s transformed them into a playoff team.
“It’s all about bouncing back, dealing with the tough times. You know you’re going to have them,” manager Bruce Bochy said Wednesday after the Rangers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 7-1 to finish a two-game AL Wild Card Series sweep.
“What’s important is how you handle it, and these guys have handled it so well,” Bochy added.
The Rangers rode a roller coaster of emotions while losing three of four games at Seattle and letting the AL West division title slip away on the final day of the regular season. Instead of returning home with a first-round playoff bye, Texas was rewarded with a cross-country flight to Florida.
“We had to fly to fly right over Dallas, so that could have been really a downer for the club,” said Bochy, a firstyear manager with Texas after winning three titles with San Francisco. “They reset, refocused, and just put together two of the best games back to back that we probably have had all year when you look at the pitching, the offense, the defense — everything we knew we had to do to beat a club like Tampa.”
The next stop is Baltimore, where the Rangers begin a Division Series against the AL East champion Orioles on Saturday.
Adolis Garcia and Evan Carter, a 20-year-old rookie who became the secondyoungest postseason player in franchise history, homered off Zach Eflin, a 16game winner unable to save Tampa Bay’s season. Garcia’s homer began a four-run
fourth.
Nathan Eovaldi gave Texas an outstanding pitching performance. The Rays’ scoreless streak reached 33 innings, one shy of the postseason record held by the 1966-74 Los Angeles Dodgers, before Curtis Mead’s RBI single in the seventh.
Texas won a postseason series for the first time since 2011, when the Rangers reached the World Series before losing to St. Louis.
Meanwhile, Tampa Bay followed a stellar start with a fizzling finish.
The Rays opened 13-0 to match the 1982 Atlanta
Braves and 1987 Milwaukee Brewers, trailing only the 20-0 start by the 1884 St. Louis Maroons of the Union Association. They led the AL East from opening day and then were overtaken by the Orioles in mid-July.
After gaining the AL’s top wild card, Tampa Bay extended its postseason losing streak to seven straight. In getting swept in consecutive Wild Card Series, the Rays scored two runs over four games while hitting .161.
Injuries were a factor in the fade to second in the AL East. Manager Kevin Cash didn’t offer any excuses for being swept again.
“Look, that’s the easy narrative,” Cash said. “We are who we are, and we finished the regular season with the guys that we had. I still feel that we could have had a better showing with the roster that we had.”
Attendance for Game 2 was 20,198, another belowsellout crowd at Tropicana Field but up slightly from Tuesday’s 19,704. That was the lowest figure for a major league postseason game since the 1919 World Series, other than 2020 games played during the coronavirus pandemic.