Yes, Texas could have pushed another couple runs across, and that would have been better.
See just about every other competitive game the Rangers have ever lost.
The pitching staff, relying on the back half of the rotation and, necessarily, on the back half of the bullpen, could have issued fewer than a relatively acceptable three walks and would like to have one of its 135 pitches back in particular.
OK.
It’s no fun to see a newly hated rival like the Blue Jays bounce around on the field after the final ball put into play.
But it’s pretty cool to be a fan of a team whose rivalries go beyond geography.
That usually means you’re pretty good.
The defense was good and the baserunning didn’t crack and four of the lineup’s nine reached base twice, including the reunited catcher whose arrival (and the AAA ticket that resulted for another player) seemed to bother some fans.
There was more evidence of what might just be an unexpected leadoff answer. An aging starting pitcher who needed to go deep, and rescue the pen, did. The one reliever who had pitched himself out of a key role over the first month looked really good. The cleanup hitter whose slug is lowest among the club’s regulars is starting to square up the opposite way a little bit, and that’s good.
It was a close game, well played on both sides, and, yes, you can point to a few moments, that if they’d just gone a different way . . . .
The other team, had they lost, would have been able to say the same thing.
Relax.
Or don’t.
The best teams in baseball history lost a third of their games.
That, for me, was as untroubling a walkoff loss as I can remember.
Derek Holland against J.A. Happ tonight, presumably a bullpen back at full strength, and a chance to split a road series with a good baseball team.
Come hang out and watch it with Jonah Keri and Sean Bass and Jake Kemp and me tonight. There will be free things to drink and free things to read and a ballgame on TV between two good clubs with a chippy recent history who have played three really tight games this week.
If Toronto 4, Texas 3 still has you worked up this morning, knock yourself out, I guess.
But don’t be afraid to hang in there. It’s cool.
Dallas attorney Jamey Newberg has been commenting on Rangers from the big club down through the entire farm system since 1998.
Scott Lucas was born in Arlington, Texas, to Richard and Becky Lucas. He lived mostly in Arlington before moving to Austin, where he graduated from The University of Texas. Scott works for Austin Valuation Consultants, Ltd., and has published several boring articles about real estate appraisal and environmental contamination. He makes a swell margarita and refuses to run longer than ten kilometres.
Eleanor grew up watching the AAA Mudhens in Toledo, Ohio. A loyal Ranger fan since 1979, she works "behind the scenes" at the Newberg Report.
