Nathan Eovaldi pitched six gritty innings on Wednesday, while Mitch Garver broke a scoreless tie with an RBI single in the seventh as the Texas Rangers won the first World Series championship in their 63-season franchise history by beating the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-0 in Game 5.
Corey Seager took a mighty hack and barely connected, sending a dribbler through an open area on the left side of the infield for the Rangers’ first hit in the seventh inning.
The Texas shortstop and World Series Most Valuable Player provided plenty of power throughout a stellar October run, but it was a little good fortune that finally sparked the offense and sent the Rangers to their first title.
Photo: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY
Considering the heartache the club went through 12 years ago in one of the all-time Fall Classic gut punches, Texas were certainly due.
Marcus Semien homered in a four-run ninth inning and the Rangers, held hitless for six innings by Zac Gallen, finished a record 11-0 on the road this post-season after capping the Fall Classic with three straight wins in the desert.
“Everything I’ve ever worked for is for this moment,” Semien said. “Gallen was unbelievable tonight, but we came through. Once Corey got the first hit, everybody kind of woke up. Pitching was unbelievable.”
Photo: AP
In his first season with Texas, manager Bruce Bochy won his fourth title 13 years to the day after his first, which came in 2010 when the Giants beat the Rangers. He also won rings with the San Francisco Giants in 2012 and 2014.
“I was sitting in a recliner there in Nashville, just enjoying myself,” said the 68-year-old Bochy, who came out of retirement to take over the Rangers.
Bochy helped exorcise some unpleasant memories for Texas fans, who watched as their team came agonizingly close to a title in 2011, needing just one strike on two occasions before losing to the St Louis Cardinals.
Photo: AFP
One night after the Rangers built a 10-run lead by the third inning in Game 4, they finished off US baseball’s third all-wild card World Series by outlasting Arizona in a white-knuckle pitchers’ duel.
Gallen carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning before giving up an opposite-field single to Seager, whose weak grounder found a hole.
Rangers rookie Evan Carter — all of 21 years old — followed with a double. Garver then delivered the first run, pumping his fist as a hard grounder up the middle scored Seager.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Garver was one for 17 at the plate in the World Series before his huge hit.
With the Rangers clinging to that 1-0 lead, Josh Jung and Nathaniel Lowe singled off Paul Sewald to start the ninth. Jung scored on Jonah Heim’s single, and Lowe came all the way around from first base when center fielder Alek Thomas let the ball get past him for an error.
Two outs later, Semien’s two-run homer made it 5-0. It was the 13th time Texas scored at least three runs in an inning this post-season.
Photo: AFP
On the mound, Eovaldi wriggled out of trouble all night before Aroldis Chapman and Josh Sborz finished it.
“I kind of joked around: I don’t know how many rabbits I have in my hat,” said Eovaldi, who improved to 5-0 with a 2.95 ERA this post-season. “I didn’t really do a great job tonight in attacking the zone, but our defense: incredible again.”
Sborz struck out four in 2-1/3 innings of one-hit relief for his first post-season save. He threw a called third strike past Ketel Marte for the final out, and jubilant Texas players rushed toward the mound to celebrate after becoming the first team to win a World Series game despite having no hits or runs through six innings.
Photo: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY
It is the first title for the Rangers, whose history dates back to 1961 when they were the expansion Washington Senators. They moved to Texas for the 1972 season.
Now, after five stadiums, roughly two dozen managers and 10,033 games, the Rangers are finally champions.
Texas led the American League West for most of the year, but coughed up the division crown on the final day of the regular season to the Houston Astros. The Rangers weathered an early season-ending injury to new ace Jacob deGrom and a significant one to Seager in April as well before red-hot slugger Adolis Garcia and three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer went down in Game 3 of the World Series.
Yet still, players like trade-deadline acquisition Jordan Montgomery, replacement closer Jose Leclerc and backup outfielder Travis Jankowski picked up the slack throughout, capping a quick and impressive turnaround under general manager Chris Young after Texas lost 102 games in 2021 and went 68-94 last year for their sixth consecutive losing season.
A disheartening 1-0 defeat in the regular-season finale against the Seattle Mariners left the Rangers with the No. 5 seed in the AL playoffs and sent them across the country to open the post-season against the Tampa Bay Rays, part of a two-week trip that took them to four cities — two on each coast.
However, after sweeping the Rays and AL East champions the Baltimore Orioles, the AL’s two winningest teams, Texas got their revenge against last year’s World Series champions the Astros, winning a hard-fought AL Championship Series in which the road team won all seven games.
That propelled the Rangers to their first Fall Classic in 12 years. Once there, they became the first team to win the World Series without committing an error since the 1966 Orioles.
Texas is to celebrate with a parade in the Arlington entertainment district today.
“We’ve just got a group of winners,” Lowe said. “When the bus driver’s driving slow, we tell him: ‘Hey man, you know you’re driving a group of winners,’ so we believed it through and through. Maybe we struggled at home, but we got it done on the road, and we’ve got a special group.”
Finally, the Rangers had to get past the young and surprising Diamondbacks, who won just 84 games during the regular season, but beat the Milwaukee Brewers, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies in a remarkable post-season run that finally fizzled.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do my job to get us there,” manager Torey Lovullo said, pausing as his voice cracked with emotion. “But I will. We all will.”
With some help from his defense, the bespectacled Gallen mowed down his first 14 hitters before walking Lowe.
Eovaldi was not as sharp, but still matched Gallen’s zeros on the scoreboard despite walking five, his most in an outing since 2013.
Arizona had some juicy opportunities to score in the first five innings, but couldn’t convert, going zero for nine with runners in scoring position.
Eovaldi made it through six, giving up four hits and striking out five on 97 pitches.
“He was a traffic cop tonight,” Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux said.
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