A World Series champion has been crowned, but before we look ahead to the offseason, let’s take a look back at some of the impressive stats that the 2023 Texas Rangers put up in the Fall Classic after defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks in five games.
This championship is the first in franchise history for the Rangers, which dates back to 1961 when they began as the Washington Senators before moving to Texas a decade later. It took them until 1996 to even make the postseason. Granted, the playoff format has changed a few times since the 60’s, more teams in, but that is still a longer streak than the oft-talked about Seattle Mariners postseason drought that went from 2001-2022.
The Rangers made the World Series in 2010 and 2011, too. The first of those Series came against the man that led them to the promised land, Bruce Bochy. The second was an absolutely heartbreaking loss to the St. Louis Cardinals that saw the Rangers literally within arm’s reach of their first title before dropping the Series in seven.
This World Series has been a long time coming for the Texas Rangers and their fans. Here’s some eye-opening stats from their win over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
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Will Smith, World Series ring collector
Will Smith has been a member of the past three World Series winners, playing for the Atlanta Braves in 2021, the Houston Astros in 2022, and was most recently with the Texas Rangers this season. It’s tough to argue with the math that Smith = World Series at this point.
The nine year MLB veteran will be a free agent this winter, and we may be able to deduce the “contenders” from the “pretenders” by which teams are after his services this offseason. That said, he didn’t pitch during the 2022 postseason with Houston and wasn’t particularly good this postseason, allowing four earned runs in just 3.2 innings. Back in 2021 with Atlanta he tossed 11 scoreless frames across the postseason to earn the Braves their ring.
Still, he’s a back-to-back-to-back World Series champion. Who said dynasties are dead?
Texas Rangers didn’t lose (on the road)
The previous high-water mark for a team to go undefeated in the postseason away from home was eight wins. The Rangers smashed that mark like it was Adolis Garcia sitting dead red with a 3-0 count and went 11-0 thanks in part to the extra round of postseason action.
Back before the postseason began, it was tough to get a read on just which versions of the teams we’d see in October. The Rangers had this run in them throughout the course of the regular season, but they put everything together when it mattered the most, eliminating the 99-win Tampa Bay Rays, the 101-win Baltimore Orioles, and then exacting some revenge on the 90-win Houston Astros for winning the AL West on the final day of the season. They ended that ALCS against Houston with an exclamation point 11-4 win, too.
The Rangers’ offense carried them throughout the regular season, hiding their bullpen. And when the lights were at their brightest and the competition was toughest, the bats just kept mashing.
Related: Texas Rangers World Series win defied probability
Both Texas and Arizona lost 100+ games just two years ago
While there has been some grumbling about the postseason format not rewarding the best teams, the 106-win Houston Astros, arguably the most consistent franchise in the game today, won their second World Series title a year ago. This season, we saw a matchup between two teams that were irrelevant two seasons ago, but they spent a little money, saw the promotions of some highly regarded prospects, and BAM they were playing for the World Series.
Some will say they made it that far because of the playoff format, but having two teams playing deep into October that are/were afterthoughts in the national narrative is good for growing the game. Sometimes you have to make people pay attention.
Baseball is a very regional sport these days, and when different teams make it into the postseason, or in this case, the World Series, then it helps bring the game to an audience that typically wouldn’t watch these games. That’s a win for MLB.
It also adds to the “there’s always next season” nature of baseball, which is an added bonus. If two teams like the 2021 Rangers (60-102) and Diamondbacks (52-110) can both make it to the Series, then there is hope for every fan base that their team can also turn things around fairly quickly, and that keeps the fans coming back year after year.
Texas Rangers’ Bruce Bochy is automatic
Starting from 2010, when Bruce Bochy’s San Francisco Giants won the first of three World Series titles, Bochy-led teams have now won the championship four times in 14 seasons. He was also retired for three years from 2019 until this season.
Bochy’s teams have won the World Series in four out of the five trips to the postseason in this span, with the lone entry that didn’t result in a parade at the end of the year being in 2016 when the Giants lost to the Chicago Cubs, who snapped their 108 year World Series drought. So unless a team is performing a franchise exorcism, once Bruce Bochy reaches the postseason, he is inevitable. The pairing of Bochy and Will Smith is borderline unfair.
In an era where teams can be consistent regular season performers and yet not win the World Series, Bruce Bochy has added his name to the list of six managers to have at least four World Series championships. He joins Joe Torre (Yankees, four), Walter Alston (Dodgers, four), Connie Mack (A’s, five), Casey Stengel (Yankees, seven), and Joe McCarthy (Yankees, seven). Joe Torre is the only name that has joined that list since the Rangers moved to Texas in 1972.
That’s a pretty impressive group, and Bochy’s inclusion is made all the more impressive because he did it with two different franchises.