Three Thoughts on Rangers at Orioles, Game 1
Texas starts its AL Divisional Series in Baltimore with a dramatic win
Three Thoughts was made for weeks like this. There is so much for a football media guy to be busy on without wandering over to the baseball playoffs, too. But, if we are going to do SturmStack correctly, we vow not to let a playoff game happen without at least 1,000 words on each and every one. We must make room for these rare occasions.
The Rangers won their third straight road playoff game today as they opened up their series in Baltimore against the Orioles, 3-2. They take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series which will play Game 2 tomorrow afternoon.
These are my three thoughts:
- This bullpen is going to cause us all to lose days off the end of our lives. We already know that much. We also already know how unprecedented this season has been from this department on the ball club – The Rangers became the first playoff team to have more blown saves (33) than completed saves (30). That simply means that while we can appreciate the occasional ability to get through a game when the bullpen can avoid extremely heavy lifting, that was never going to take you very far this time of year. It is nearly impossible to go far in a baseball post-season for a number of reasons, but better believe that if it does happen, it will require your pen to do plenty of work.