Rangers keep eyes on wild card despite loss to White Sox

The Texas Rangers didn’t get the pep rally sendoff they hoped for Sunday before heading off to Anaheim, Calif., for what has shaped up to be a key series.

The Rangers dropped the finale of a four-game set to the Chicago White Sox 3-2, but that did little to take away from the success of the homestand or their renewed flirtation with postseason contention.

They went 7-3 in the 10 games at Globe Life Park to creep their way back into the American League wild-card hunt.

Observers might get a better sense of their contender status beginning Monday with four dates against the Los Angeles Angeles — the first of 10 straight on the road.

The four against the Angels, co-leaders in the race for the second wild-card berth, are merely the first of what could be a number of playoff auditions down the stretch.

The Rangers are 2  1/2 games back of the Angels and Twins.

“The way I look at it, we had an extremely productive homestand,” manager Jeff Banister said. “I think we’re in a much better spot than when we started the homestand. We gained ground.”

Entering Sunday, the Rangers had an MLB-best .896 OPS in August. Following a shutout loss to Miami on July 24, they had an AL-worst average but have since hit .288 to rise to 11th in the league.

A day after collecting 20 hits, the Rangers scraped together six on Sunday but not when they needed them most — except for Rougned Odor’s two-run homer in the ninth.

Some adage about how baseball “go” probably best explained the sudden downturn in production, but the Rangers let up on the gas a bit, failing to cash in with the bases loaded in the second and third innings and with runners in scoring position in the fourth. Adrian Beltre fouled out with Odor on third with two outs in the seventh.

White Sox right-hander Miguel Gonzalez (7-10) had the shutdown codes, allowing no runs on four hits and four walks while striking out six over six innings.

The Rangers went 2 for 12 with runners in scoring position.

“There were no productive outs today. Bases loaded twice and came away with no runs scored,” Banister said. “You feel good about the number of base runners we had, however, not getting runners across until late, those games typically don’t work out well for you.”

“Resilient” was a favored descriptor for Texas a year ago. “Stubborn” might be a good one for the 2017 Rangers, who resist the baseball pundits’ insistence to write them off.

Now it’s off to California, where the hunt resumes.

“I think we all understand that the end goal is to try to get to that wild card,” said Cole Hamels, who takes an 8-1 record into Monday’s Game 1 against lefty Tyler Skaggs (1-3). “They’re ahead of us. For us, we have to go out and play good baseball.

“They’ve been playing good baseball; we’ve been playing good baseball. It’s a matter of going out there and taking care of business.”

Complicating the Rangers’ pursuit is the number of teams within striking distance. Seven teams are within four games of the second wild-card spot.

After Sunday’s loss to Chicago, the Rangers have 39 games left in the season. Twenty of them are against teams in the running for the wild card.

Monday is the first of 10 remaining against the Angels.

A good series against Los Angeles doesn’t mean a thing. It’s on to the next at Oakland before finishing off the trip at Houston.

“Every game for us is big,” said Beltre. “We have about six weeks left and we’re in the hunt for the wild card, but there’s a lot of teams there. So we have to take advantage of every situation that we can.

“Obviously, the Angels are one of the teams in front of us. It would be more beneficial for us to at least win a series there.”

This story was originally published August 20, 2017 at 7:41 PM with the headline "Rangers keep eyes on wild card despite loss to White Sox."