Rangers stray from script to top Blue Jays in Game 1

Game 1 of the American League Division Series was won Thursday by the Texas Rangers, just as everyone expected.

Yeah, right.

The Rangers did beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-3 with home runs from the bottom two hitters in their lineup, with five more quality innings against the Blue Jays by Yovani Gallardo, with Sam Dyson acting as closer, and with Adrian Beltre at an area hospital after a third-inning RBI single.

As improbable as a Rangers victory was against Cy Young candidate David Price, at least as forecast by baseball’s leading experts, the way they won was from an unused script in their 88-win regular season.

Sometimes it takes a village, but a win is win and the Rangers now have a leg up in the best-of-five series.

“We’ve got a very confident group of guys,” manager Jeff Banister said. “We’ve got a group of guys that they absolutely love playing together and they’ve been up against all year long since spring training.

“So, it’s not anything that we haven’t faced already about what is said on the outside about our ballclub. We know that we’re a ballclub that’s not a perfect ballclub, but we’ve got a group of guys that play extremely well together.”

As of dinnertime, it appeared as if the Rangers would be playing Friday without third baseman Adrian Beltre in Game 2. He was diagnosed with a lower back strain stemming from a first-inning slide into second base to break up a double play.

He lasted until the third inning, receiving an injection of anti-inflammatory medicine in the clubhouse. Two batters after Rougned Odor scored on a Delino DeShields single, Beltre slapped a single to center to score DeShields.

Beltre, though, could barely run to first base. He stayed in the game but was lifted at the end of the inning after he couldn’t run to second base.

Beltre returned to the Rangers’ clubhouse after a visit to an area hospital. An MRI exam taken there showed no structural damage, and the Rangers said that Beltre is day-to-day and did not rule him out for Game 2.

“Adrian Beltre is a bleeping stud,” left fielder Josh Hamilton said. “He’s played with a lot of pain in the past and he’d continued to if we let him. He didn’t want to come out. That’s the type of guy he is.”

The Rangers opted to fly in third basemen Joey Gallo and Ed Lucas from Arizona, where they were stationed to stay sharp in case of an injury, but removing Beltre from the roster would keep him out for the rest of the ALDS as well as the entire AL Championship Series.

“That would be the last option,” general manager Jon Daniels said. “The news would have to be worse than it is now for us to consider that.”

Beltre’s single put the Rangers up 2-0. Toronto scored once in the fourth, but the Rangers’ fifth opened with Odor getting plunked for the second time. No. 9 hitter Robinson Chirinos followed with a drive to left-center for a 4-1 lead.

The Blue Jays scored single runs in the fifth and sixth, but Odor started the seventh with a line shot that was just high enough to clear the wall in right field. He scored three times from the eighth spot in the lineup.

“Anything you can gain against David Price is a plus,” said Chirinos, a former teammate of Price with Tampa Bay. “I think he relaxed a little bit against people in the bottom of the lineup. He doesn’t throw that hard against the seventh, eighth and ninth hitters. I took the first pitch and was looking middle in and was able to hit it out of the ballpark.”

Left-hander Jake Diekman pitched two perfect innings in the seventh and eighth, and he retired Jose Bautista, who had homered in the sixth, on a pop-up to get to the ninth. Dyson was the choice by Banister over closer Shawn Tolleson, and Dyson pitched around a leadoff single to end it.

The decision came after a pre-series meeting in which the members of the back of the bullpen were told that game situations and matchups would dictate how they will be used.

Tolleson, who saved 35 games, said that he wanted to be in the game, but said a win is what matters most.

“Tolly’s still our guy out there in the bullpen, and you will see Tolleson at the end of the game,” Banister said. “But in these type of ballgames and in a series like this, it’s about finding the best matchups for our bullpen.”

That move worked just like everything else the Rangers did Thursday, just as everyone expected.

Yeah, right.

This story was originally published October 8, 2015 at 8:13 PM with the headline "Rangers stray from script to top Blue Jays in Game 1."