Three Thoughts on Rangers at Rays, Game 2
Texas wins its first playoff round since 2011 with an emphatic sweep of Tampa
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. That’s all true, but here’s the thing. The only thing stopping me from making time to give you three thoughts on a baseball playoff game that I was pumped to see would be my own boundaries. So, I am going to make it happen here at #Sturmstack because I can and this game deserved it.
The Rangers advanced today with a 7-1 win in Game 2 in Tampa. They now move to Baltimore to play the top-seeded Orioles in a Best of 5 series that begins on Saturday.
These are my three thoughts:
- I simply cannot believe that Nathan Eovaldi could muster that type of performance just at the perfect time. There was a time in 2023 – a long, long ways back – when between April 18th and May 23rd that Eovaldi was on a tremendous roll with seven consecutive quality starts (6 or more innings while allowing 3 or fewer earned runs). He was the team leader for much of the year in this category, but the frequency dropped as fatigue seemed to take away some of the bite on his pitches. On July 18th, he had his final quality start against Tampa Bay, but eyebrows raised as he only struck out two, a season low. A few days later, he skipped a start with forearm tightness and elbow discomfort. Rest was considered the solution, but before long he was down until September 4th when he started a game against the Astros (that went very poorly). He was ramped back up with a careful pitch count throughout the month of September, but his final start in Seattle lacked velocity and command. He was being barreled up time and time again by the Mariners.