Rangers pull out all stops, inch closer to postseason

This isn’t playoff baseball, technically, but this is baseball to get to the playoffs.

Jeff Banister managed the latest Texas Rangers win Friday against the team they have to put away as if it were an October game.

The Rangers took an early lead, and Banister endeavored to keep it.

He removed Mike Napoli for defense in the fourth inning. He didn’t give Yovani Gallardo the chance to finish five innings. Matchups were played out of the bullpen, and closer Shawn Tolleson was used in a non-save situation.

The maneuvering worked like a charm, as the Rangers hung on for a 6-2 victory over the Houston Astros. Now more than ever, playoff baseball appears to be in the Rangers’ future.

Shin-Soo Choo drove in three runs, two of them on a fourth-inning homer, and five relievers combined on 4  1/3 scoreless innings as the Rangers moved 4 1/2 games up on the Astros in the American League West and reduced their magic number to five with nine games to go.

Any combination of five Rangers wins or losses by the second-place team will give them their first division title since 2011. The champagne, though, isn’t chilling just yet. Instead, expect more of the same from the dugout until it’s time to celebrate.

“This is playoff baseball when you’re playing the team closest to you,” Banister said. “It worked for us. We’ll continue to look at each one of these games in the same way.”

The Rangers beat the Astros for the eighth straight game, and they did so by starting quickly again.

The Rangers scored once against All-Star left-hander Scott Kazmir in the first on a double by Prince Fielder after Adrian Beltre had taken a walk to extend the inning.

They added two more in the second as Mitch Moreland, who opened with a double, scored on a Kazmir throwing error and as Chris Gimenez, who had his first career triple, scored on a broken-bat flare by Choo that just eluded the dive of left fielder Preston Tucker.

The Rangers’ big inning was the fourth, and the three-run rally started after Kazmir quickly got the first two outs. Delino DeShields kept things going by legging out a double, and Choo followed with his 19th homer.

Beltre then doubled, and Fielder drove in his second run with a single for a 6-0 lead. Five of the six runs came with two outs, and Choo, Fielder and Beltre combined to go 7 for 14 with all five RBIs and three runs.

“It’s huge, really,” Banister said. “To come into this ballpark, a place we know that these guys love to play, to do what we did there early to put some runs on the board put some pressure on them early. The top of that lineup really showed up for us tonight.”

Gallardo, though, quickly allowed a triple to Evan Gattis and a homer to Luis Valbuena to start the Astros’ fourth. Two more Astros reached, but Gallardo escaped at 6-2.

But he didn’t get a chance to finish the fifth. Gattis’ two-out double brought Banister from the dugout, which didn’t appear to sit well with Gallardo, and Andrew Faulkner got the final out.

“We won,” Gallardo said. “That’s the most important thing.”

Faulkner was the first of five relievers used by the Rangers, and they allowed only three hits and didn’t walk a batter. Ross Ohlendorf did most of the dirty work, tossing 1  1/3 scoreless innings to earn the win.

The bullpen allowed only two runs in 11 innings in a three-game sweep at Oakland and has a baseball-leading 1.87 ERA this month.

The relievers can expect to work at any time the rest of the season until the Rangers reach their ultimate regular-season goal. Now more than ever, playoff baseball appears to be in the Rangers’ future.

“They understand the moment,” Banister said. “We’re not going to look up until it’s done.”

This story was originally published September 25, 2015 at 11:34 PM with the headline "Rangers pull out all stops, inch closer to postseason."