The Rangers started strong and built a lead the Orioles could not challenge, sweeping the winningest team in the American League out of the playoffs with a 7-1 win in Game 3 of the AL Division Series on Tuesday night. The worry going into this series was that Texas’ relentless bats would set a pace the Orioles could not match. Then you look at the Orioles.
The Rangers started strong and built a lead the Orioles could not challenge, sweeping the winningest team in the American League out of the playoffs with a 7-1 win in Game 3 of the AL Division Series on Tuesday night.
Here are five things we learned from the game.
The worry going into this series was that Texas’ relentless bats would set a pace the Orioles could not match. That was exactly what happened over the last two games as the Rangers put 33 men on base and scored 18 runs.
Their lineup guarantees a long night full of terrors, from leadoff hitter Marcus Semien’s 73 extra-base hits to Corey Seager’s .623 slugging percentage to Adolis García’s 39 home runs to rookie Evan Carter’s .413 on-base percentage. Manager Bruce Bochy has led three teams to World Series championships and recently said he’s never worked with a better batch of hitters.
Then you look at the Orioles. Gunnar Henderson might put up numbers like those someday. So might Adley Rutschman and several prospects expected to arrive from the farm over the next few years. Anthony Santander, Austin Hays and Cedric Mullins are fine players in their primes, but none is a Most Valuable Player candidate.
The Orioles were outgunned.
The 11-game difference between the Orioles’ and Rangers’ regular-season records probably misled some fans to expect a mismatch in the other direction. But the Rangers hit better — first in the American League in runs, home runs, walks, on-base percentage and slugging percentage — than the Orioles did anything. Their lineup turned out to be the controlling element in the series.
That does not mean it will always be this way for the Orioles. The Rangers spent $500 million on Semien and Seager because they’re finished products. The Orioles are betting their guys — Henderson, Rutschman, Jackson Holliday, Coby Mayo, Heston Kjerstad — will be next. They have five position players ranked among Baseball America’s top 50 prospects.
That’s cold comfort for this year’s team and for the fans who grew to love it, but the Orioles stand a good chance of becoming the bullies with the heaviest lumber in some not-so-distant October.
Rutschman stood silently, his eyes locked on the Rangers whooping it up after the final out. “You gotta tell yourself you’re going to be there next year,” he explained later.
Exactly.
The Rangers eat mistakes like so much Texas barbecue. You can’t miss within the strike zone, and you can’t let them off the hook if you’re up in the count.
Kremer did both in an outing he’d like to forget.
The Rangers picked up where they left off in Game 2, smacking three hits off Kremer in the first inning. Seager, probably the best hitter in the American League this year, jumped all over a changeup that drifted too far inside, golfing it into the right field seats to put Texas up 1-0 in the bottom of the first.
In the second, Kremer started Rangers first baseman Nathaniel Lowe with a pair of fastball strikes only to let the at-bat mushroom into a 15-pitch nightmare that guaranteed he would be out of the game earlier than hoped.
