ARLINGTON -- Acceptance has appeared to be the theme of the Rangers’ homestand.

The reigning World Series champs have stumbled through most of the 2024 season, but they remained in the thick of the American League West race through the Trade Deadline, when the club mostly stood pat. Things quickly fell apart shortly thereafter. By the start of this week’s three-game set against the Pirates, there was a sense of understanding in the Rangers' clubhouse about where they stood at this point of the season.

There was acceptance and understanding, but there was also a sense that they shouldn’t just roll over for dead. That showed in the series finale on Wednesday, as rookie Wyatt Langford delivered a walk-off RBI single with two outs to break a 0-0 stalemate and propel the Rangers to a series win over the Pirates with a 1-0 victory at Globe Life Field.

It marked the Rangers’ first series win since a sweep of the White Sox from July 22-25.

“It was great,” Langford said. “Obviously, it's always good to be in that spot and come through. It’s cool when you do. … You never want to come here and feel like you're just going to lose or that you don't really care if you win or not. If you feel like that, it leads to playing bad baseball, so you just want to come here every day and just do what you can to win that day.”

It was Langford’s second career walk-off hit (also July 22 vs. White Sox, with a walk-off single). He is the first Rangers rookie to record multiple walk-offs in the same season since Adolis García in 2021.

The Rangers hadn’t scored since Corey Seager's three-run home run in the third inning on Monday night, a stretch of 22 straight innings. In fact, entering the bottom of the ninth, every Ranger other than Seager was 8-for-73 in the series against Pittsburgh before Jonah Heim, García and Langford delivered three singles in the ninth to close it out.

Despite securing a series win, the offensive struggles were illustrative of the entire season for the Rangers.

“We see it the same way y'all do,” third baseman Josh Jung said. “It sucks. It's not fun. We’re trying everything we can to get out of it. Sometimes you just don't have the answers, and we're searching every day. It's not a lack of effort. It's not a lack of care. It's just really unfortunate that we aren't stringing at-bats together.”

Almost fittingly, starting pitcher Andrew Heaney did not factor into the decision, as his back luck with run support continued. Heaney tossed five scoreless innings with eight strikeouts, though this accounted for the sixth time this season where Texas' offense gave Heaney zero runs of support.

Heaney recognizes the situation he’s been in this season as it pertains to run support, but he also accepts that those things are out of his control.

“You can say what you want about the offense and all that, but if you don't go five innings, you don't get a win,” Heaney said. “There's been plenty of times I haven't gone five innings, haven't qualified. Would I love to have a 10-0 lead on every single game? Sure, but that's just not a realistic thing. So for me, it's just trying to pitch to the situation of the game and do the best I can to let the game kind of dictate what I need to do.”

With just under six weeks left in the season, the Rangers are focused on finishing strong -- both individually and collectively -- despite what the standings say. For the guys in the clubhouse, it continues to be important to not just go through the motions every day.

That includes a hope that the offense can finally come together and that the pitching staff can continue putting the Rangers in a position to win baseball games.

“I think in anything, you want to take pride in what you do,” Heaney said. “We get paid a lot of money to play a game, the least we can do is go out there and put the effort and energy forward. … I'm hoping that our guys will just play loose and free at the end. I guess we're not officially eliminated, right? I mean, we need to go win games. That's the ultimate goal. I think finishing strong for this group, the guys that know that they're going to be back, it’ll be a big boost to them to have something to hold on to next year.”