The Texas Rangers are down to one game, one pitcher, and one very narrow path.
With the regular season ending Sunday, Texas is tied with the Houston Astros for the AL West lead at 80-81, but the Rangers don’t own the tiebreaker. That means there’s no scenario where they can simply win and celebrate.
They have to beat the Minnesota Twins, and they need the Astros to lose to the Athletics. Only then would Texas claim its first division title since 2016 and earn the right to host an AL wild card series on Tuesday.
That’s the backdrop for left-hander MacKenzie Gore, who gets the ball in the finale at 2:10 p.m. central. The Astros and Athletics start five minutes earlier, at 2:05 p.m., so both clubs will spend the afternoon staring at scoreboards and waiting on the other result. By the time it’s over, one team will be headed home with a division title, and the other will be staring at the end of its season.
Gore hasn’t exactly been rolling into this assignment. Over his last seven starts, he’s 1-2 with a 5.23 ERA, along with 20 strikeouts and 19 walks in 31 innings.
He has failed to reach six innings in each of his last three outings, though he did allow just one earned run in his most recent start against the New York Mets on Tuesday. He’ll be on normal rest for Sunday’s game.
The Rangers could really use the version of Gore they saw on August 21 against the Los Angeles Angels. In that outing, he worked six shutout innings, allowed two hits and one walk, and struck out seven. It was his best start across his last seven appearances.
Texas also enters the day dealing with some roster uncertainty. Third baseman Josh Jung will be unavailable if the Rangers make the playoffs after being placed on the 10-day injured list Saturday with a right hand fracture. Designated hitter Joc Pederson is also on the injured list with a left hand fracture, though he remains eligible to be activated during the wild card series.
Before any of that matters, though, the Rangers need help. Part of their season now sits in Gore’s left arm.
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The problem for Texas is that Langford is now entering the final year of his pre-arbitration control, which forces an offseason decision sooner rather than later. He has shown enough potential to make an extension tempting, but his injuries and inconsistency have kept him from fully locking in the kind of status a franchise would usually want before making a major commitment. [Read more 🡒]