Rangers Season Ends

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The Texas Rangers recent slump continued into the playoffs with a 5-1 loss to the Baltimore Orioles Friday night at the Ballpark in Arlington.

After leading the AL West from opening week to the final game, the Rangers limped into the postseason, hosting the first-ever American League Wildcard game.  The one-game format would determine who would advance to the ALDS.  Baltimore will now advance to play the New York Yankees while the Rangers go home to ponder what went wrong.

Texas ended the season losing 8 of the last 10 games, including a sweep by the Oakland A’s which gave Oakland the AL West title. 

“We just didn’t get it done,” Rangers manager Ron Washington said. “It came down to being able to execute against good pitching, and it wasn’t the base hits or anything like that, it was just the fundamentals that we just — we tried and we just couldn’t get it done.”

Yu Darvish finished his rookie season with a solid start, though it ended with a loss.  Darvish went 6 2/3 innings, with 7 strikeouts and allowed just 2 earned runs.  The problem for Darvish was that Joe Saunders of Baltimore allowed just 1 run.

Josh Hamilton went 0-4 in what might have been his final game as a Ranger.  He was booed walking back to the dugout after striking out twice.  Hamilton is a free agent and has said he will continue to negotiate with Texas to remain with the team.  Contract talks held last summer failed.  Hamilton may be the first of the Ranger stars to exit the team since Texas made back-to-back World Series appearances.

“It’s a miserable feeling,” outfielder David Murphy said. “Compared to the last two years … it was frustrating to get to the World Series and lose. But I would definitely rather get there and lose rather than being at this point. Next week we’ll be watching teams on TV knowing that we’re good enough to be there. But we didn’t perform. We don’t deserve to be there.”

 

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