Ultimately, the Texas Rangers have reached their first World Series in a dozen years by continuing to do what carried them all season.
They bashed and battered opposing pitching, winning Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, 11-4, against their division and in-state rivals, the defending champion Houston Astros.
That Texas offense.
A Rangers’ offense that just keeps demoralizing good pitching, something that isn’t supposed to happen this often in the postseason.
First, though, let’s start with the other storylines that erupted from Monday’s blowout.
All seven games of the series were won by the road team. The Rangers tied a postseason record with their eighth straight road victory. The Astros lost 22 of their final 29 at Minute Maid Park in 2023, including five of six this postseason.
The Rangers’ win guarantees Major League Baseball again won’t have a repeat champion since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees, the longest current drought among the four oldest North American pro sports leagues.
It also creates an opportunity for the Rangers to capture their first World Series title in their modern franchise’s history (dating back to 1972) and its overall history (including the 11-season run of its predecessor, the Washington Senators).
On Monday, future Hall-of-Famer Max Scherzer shook off more rust and outlasted budding postseason phenom Cristian Javier, despite not making it out of the third. Jordan Montgomery, in relief, picked up his third win of this postseason, joining Nate Eovaldi (4-0) for seven of the Rangers’ nine wins, proving that their Big Two, and maybe Big Three with Scherzer, can hang with more exalted rotations.
Houston reliever Bryan Abreu had his two-game suspension — for plunking Rangers star Adolis García in Game 5 — delayed until next season, allowing him to pitch Monday. Abreu hit another batter, Mitch Garver, in Monday’s sixth before allowing a two-run homer to Nathaniel Lowe, giving the Rangers some extra satisfaction in a wholly exhilarating night for the newly crowned AL champs.
Abreu’s storyline fizzled quickly. It had no impact on the game.
Really, only one thing stood out Monday and Sunday in Houston: How powerful Texas’ offense is when it’s unleashed. The Rangers, who scored more runs than any other AL team this season, plated 20 runs on 25 hits in their two, do-or-die games at Minute Maid.
Texas Rangers bash their way to the World Series
On Sunday, they pounded three homers. On Monday, four, including two by García, who has smashed five in four games and driven in 15 runs, the most by one player ever in a single postseason series.
García, who was 4-for-5 on Monday, has 20 RBIs this postseason. He has at least four more games to catch record-holder David Freese, who drove in 21 in the 2011 playoffs for the St. Louis Cardinals.
“He’s a bad man, isn’t he?” Texas Rangers shortstop Corey Seager told Fox Sports when asked post-game about Garcia. “To be able to come into this atmosphere and do it every at-bat and do what he did was pretty special. It was real fun to watch.”
Seager, who likely will be the runner-up for the 2023 AL MVP, demonstrated he has plenty of badness in him as well. After a three-hit game Monday, including his third homer of the postseason, Seager now leads his club with a 1.127 OPS in 12 playoff games. Five Rangers regulars have a postseason slugging percentage over .500 – and that doesn’t include star Marcus Semien who has struggled to a .231 slugging and a .192 average in these 12 games.
Regardless, Texas has outscored their opponents 71-45, plating four or more runs in nine of 12 games and seven or more runs in five.
Yes, they crushed opponents in the regular season, too. Their plus-165 run differential was second in the AL despite being middle of the pack in runs allowed.
But this lineup isn’t feasting on bad pitching in the playoffs. Texas faced the third, fifth and sixth best staffs in the AL, and averaged nearly six runs per game.
Remember the adage about great pitching besting great hitting in the postseason? Well, the Rangers don’t. Or they’ve ignored it anyway.
They’ve pitched well, holding opponents to two runs or fewer in six of their 12 playoff games. But the Rangers staff has also allowed five runs or more four times in this tournament, so there is room for improvement.
The Rangers know they’ll be starting at home Friday night in Game 1 of the World Series, but they don’t know whether they’ll face the Philadelphia Phillies or the Arizona Diamondbacks. Those two have their own Game 7 of the NLCS on Tuesday night in Philadelphia.
Whichever team emerges from the NL can really pitch. Those two have the lowest ERAs this postseason of any team that made it beyond the wild-card round. And each has a formidable 1-2 punch in Arizona’s Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly and Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola. The Rangers will need to lumber up once again.
But this group has been bashing since the postseason began. It’s been crushing the ball since Opening Day, when the Rangers scored 29 runs in a three-game sweep of the Phillies.
The Rangers pitching is fine. They play solid defense. So did the teams they have faced this postseason.
The difference is these fellas can really hit.
We saw it again Monday — when it counted the most.
Dan Connolly is an MLB Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.