Stubbs’ catch keeps Rangers from hitting panic button

The thing about baseball players is that they are conditioned to losing.

Even the best teams are going to lose 60 to 70 times per year. Losing three straight games is no big deal.

They don’t set out to lose three in a row or even one, but it happens. Often. Even during the final 10 games of a season.

So, panic wasn’t consuming the Texas Rangers, losers of three straight entering Tuesday and the owners of a shrinking lead in the American League West and a stagnating magic number.

“We’re still in first place,” left fielder Mike Napoli said.

They weren’t panicking — at least they said they weren’t — as the Detroit Tigers kept scoring off Cole Hamels and eventually erased an early deficit, or when Shawn Tolleson found himself in a ninth-inning jam, or when Ian Kinsler sent a rocket to the gap with Drew Stubbs giving chase.

The Rangers had it the whole time.

Hamels rebounded. The Rangers’ offense made the Tigers’ defense work just enough to squeeze out another run, and Stubbs made his mark with a running game-saving catch to seal a 7-6 victory that snapped the Rangers’ three-game skid and moved them another game closer to the postseason.

The Rangers’ reaction to the final out showed that while maybe they weren’t panicking, they were relieved.

“That’s about as good a catch as you’re going to see in center field in a tough, pressure situation,” manager Jeff Banister said. “You see Stubbs tracking it down, there’s a little emotion going on inside of all of us. For him to run that down the way he did, yeah, we’re going to release some emotion there.

“We might have even released some emotion if he didn’t catch it there.”

The Rangers lead the Los Angeles Angels by two games in the AL West and their magic number dropped to four with five games to play. The Angels overtook the Houston Astros for second place late Tuesday with an 8-1 victory over Oakland while the

Astros were losing in Seattle 6-4.

Shin-Soo Choo homered in a five-run first inning, and the Rangers scored four unearned runs against a sloppy Tigers defense in support of Hamels, who allowed six two-out runs over six innings.

The Rangers were in a 2-0 hole after J.D. Martinez’s homer in the first, but Kinsler booted a soft Delino DeShields liner to start the first and the Tigers’ woeful fielding.

Choo followed with a shot to right field off Daniel Norris, who threw 54 pitches in a first inning that also included Jefry Marte dropping a Mitch Moreland pop-up for a 3-2 lead. Elvis Andrus (sacrifice fly) and Rougned Odor (triple) added the other two runs.

But the Tigers kept coming against Hamels (6-1). The Tigers added two more in the second and after Beltre’s RBI single off Marte’s glove made it 6-4, they scored twice more in the third to tie the game.

The offenses then went largely dormant, in the Rangers’ case especially with runners in scoring position. But they got one in the fourth with two outs after Choo doubled and scored on what was scored a double for Beltre on a ball that Martinez tracked over a long stretch in right field only to completely miss.

“Just guys continuing to grind at-bats out,” Banister said. “Nothing’s going to come easy. We have to continue to grind and push every single inning and every pitch.”

The Tigers had only one more hit against Hamels after they tied the score — a two-out single by former TCU star Bryan Holaday, who had homered in the second. But they got two one-out hits in the ninth against closer Shawn Tolleson to set up a tense finish.

Rajai Davis was next, and he bunted at the first pitch and popped it up to Moreland at first base. That left it up to Kinsler, the former Rangers All-Star, who sent a line drive into the gap in right-center field.

Stubbs, who entered in the eighth for DeShields, sprinted to his left, reached and caught the ball just before it got past him. Two Detroit runs would have scored, but instead, the game ended and the Rangers celebrated.

“When he hit it, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get there,” Stubbs said. “I think instincts kick in and everything else becomes a blur and you just lock in on that ball and you just go get it. He hit it well.”

The Rangers also let out some emotion from winning a big September game.

This story was originally published September 29, 2015 at 11:27 PM with the headline "Stubbs’ catch keeps Rangers from hitting panic button."