Rangers regain footing, and putting their foot down

When the Rangers lost Max Scherzer for the season the other day, it meant they were merely down five Cy Young Awards in their starting rotation, having already lost Jacob deGrom for the year.

Chris Young, the former pitcher who is the Rangers' general manager, signed deGrom as a free agent, and deGrom ultimately started six games for the Rangers before a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow resulted in Tommy John surgery. He is gone until the middle of next season, at least. For now, his lifetime record with the Rangers is 2-0 and a 2.67 ERA.

Because deGrom got hurt, Young took another shot and decided to build his August-September-October rotation around Scherzer, another ex-Met. The Rangers got eight starts out of him -- a 4-2 record and a 3.20 ERA -- before he went down.

“We landed a player that we felt like is going to get us to where we want to go this year,” Young said after the Scherzer trade.

But here is what is happening now with the Rangers without their two aces, in the season when it once looked as if they might win 100 games, a season that saw them stumble so badly from the middle of August and into September:

They keep coming.

The Rangers don’t go away. They just swept a four-game series from the Blue Jays in Toronto -- another team in the Wild Card scrum in the American League, along with the Astros, Rangers, Mariners. But the Rangers aren’t just thinking about a Wild Card. They are still thinking about winning the West from the Astros, one of the perennial powers in the sport, and from the Mariners.

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Coming out of the Blue Jays sweep, the Rangers are just a half-game behind the Astros in the wild West, and a game ahead of the Mariners. They have finished their season series with the Astros (Houston holds the tiebreaker between them by winning the season series), but they have seven games left out of their last 16 with the Mariners, including finishing the regular season with four in Seattle. If they win three of those seven, the Rangers gain the tiebreaker over the Mariners. That final series might provide some ending for the Rangers, one way or another. But then, this has been some season.

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There is a famous amusement park in Dallas called Six Flags Over Texas. It includes what is described as the second-largest swing ride in the world. That is what the Rangers have been thus far, just with the ups and downs of the past month. They’ve become the Six Flags Rangers. In the same baseball September, they were swept by the Astros and outscored, 39-10, giving up a grand, whopping total of 16 home runs in three games. Now they have turned around and swept the Blue Jays the way they did just did.

“We lose one of our guys, Max, I mean, it’s a tough loss,” said manager Bruce Bochy, an all-time great who came out of retirement to take one last ride of his own in Texas.

This was after Jordan Montgomery, whom Young got from the Cardinals at the Deadline, had given his team a star effort against the Blue Jays in a game the Rangers needed, because they need as many as they can get the rest of the way if they’re going to win the West, or at least win a Wild Card.

“But for Montgomery to go out there and do what he did,” Bochy continued, “I just think that sends even a greater sense of confidence through the club that ‘Hey, we’re very good. We have depth in the rotation, and we’re going to be fine.’”

The Rangers haven’t just endured injuries to deGrom and Scherzer. Nathan Eovaldi had a forearm strain and is still working his way back to full strength; Eovaldi pitched into the fourth against the Blue Jays on Thursday night. Corey Seager, their batting star, has 31 homers, 92 RBIs and a .344 average despite missing 44 games so far with injuries of his own. Josh Jung got hurt, Adolis García got hurt. So did their All-Star catcher, Jonah Heim, who is back in the lineup now after he went on the injured list in July with a left wrist tendon injury.

But after looking their worst and playing their very worst from August and into September -- there was an eight-game losing streak before the Astros did to the Rangers what they did -- the Rangers just showed up the way they did against the Blue Jays, and did that on the road. Seager hit a three-run homer on Thursday night, Heim hit a homer and suddenly the Rangers have won six games in a row.

“We are,” Heim said, “leaving here with a lot of confidence.”

They ought to. Eight-game losing streak in August, six-game winning streak now. Get swept by the Astros. Go on the road and sweep the Jays. Half-game out of first, 16 games left to play. The wild ride continues for the Swing Ride Rangers. Buckle up.