ARLINGTON -- You just need to win series. Stack series and the rest will work itself out.
But for the Rangers, just winning the series doesn’t seem to be enough at this point. Texas is in a precarious position entering this final week of the regular season with a razor-thin margin for error in order to reach the postseason.
The Rangers won the first two games against the Blue Jays this weekend, but a sweep would have done wonders for the standings.
Texas fell, 7-2, to Toronto in Sunday afternoon’s finale at Globe Life Field, as the Rangers could not complete the sweep, despite having ace Jacob deGrom on the mound against a Blue Jays bullpen game.
Despite the loss, the Rangers (78-78) maintained their one-game lead over the Astros (77-79) atop the American League West entering Monday’s off-day.
The Rangers are undefeated in their last nine home series (8-0-1), good for the longest such streak in the Globe Life Field era (since 2020), but they still have not completed a sweep since taking all four games in Toronto from June 25-28. Their last sweep at home was against the Royals from May 29-31.
The Rangers entered Sunday 21-55 when their opponent scores first. That troubling trend continued, when deGrom issued a leadoff walk to Brett Bateman to open the game. Bateman went first to third on a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. single and then scored on a sacrifice fly for a 1-0 Toronto lead.
Twice deGrom issued a leadoff walk to Bateman. Twice, Bateman came around to score. While Toronto scored more than enough runs throughout the rest of the game to win, the two runs early loomed large for a team that has often struggled to play from behind.