It’s June 4th, and the Texas Rangers currently hold one of the American League’s five playoff positions, leading the Red Sox by two games in the loss column (and zero in the win column).
Of course, they’ve only played 35% of their games. But on the other hand, they’ve played an entire 35% of their games. And through those games, the Rangers have been the fifth-most successful team in the American League.
The story, regarding this, has not been the Rangers. It’s been the struggles of Boston and Cleveland, two teams expected to be in much better positions than one and two games back, respectively, from the second wild card.
And in all likelihood, the story will never be the Rangers this year. Joey Gallo, one of the best players in baseball and certainly the best player on the Rangers, just went on the IL. FiveThirtyEight gives them only a 9% chance of playing in the postseason. FanGraphs is even more pessimistic, putting the likelihood at 1.9%. Beyond Gallo, their best player so far has been a journeyman pitcher who throws in the low 90’s and missed the entireties of two recent seasons with a shoulder injury. Their offense has been bolstered by a 36-year-old who was one win worse than a replacement-level player over the course of 2018.
Which is why we need to appreciate the Rangers while they’re here. Because despite what every indicator would indicate looking at their roster, the Rangers keep winning.
And it’s not like they’re riding unicorns. Yes, they’re riding a few—or at least Hunter Pence, God bless him—but the underlying metrics suggest the Rangers really have been pretty good. Their Pythagorean Win-Loss and BaseRuns average out to only half a game worse than their real record. Their team FIP is 4.64 against an ERA of 4.94. Their BABIP is .312, luckier than average, but inflated by Joey Gallo’s utter demolition of baseballs. They’ve already played the Astros ten times—so they’re over halfway through that piece of baseball hell. They rank about in the middle of the MLB in both Pitcher WAR and Position Player WAR. They’re not a great team, but they’re playing like a decent team, and with Boston and Cleveland scuffling, that’s been enough so far.
The Rangers start a three-game set against the Orioles today. After that, they host the A’s for four games in three days. When they roll into Boston a week from yesterday, possibly to trot Mike Minor out against the great Chris Sale, they could very well still be ahead of the reigning champions in the standings. It shouldn’t last for long, but it shouldn’t have gotten this far.
And that’s pretty fun.
