00:00Oh, baby, those Texas Rangers.
00:02The 1-0 pitch.
00:03Swing and a looper out into left center, and it falls for the base hit.
00:07Coming in from third, Carter, he scores.
00:10Hellman stops at second.
00:12Opposite field RBI single for Jock Peterson.
00:15Rangers lead 5-4.
00:17From the 2-1-4.
00:19Sorry.
00:20Thanks, Kevin.
00:21Now I feel like part of the show.
00:22That was the person I told.
00:23I was spiting.
00:24You're welcome.
00:24And they said a ghost host, if you will.
00:27Well, we will have Skip Schumacher on the show at about 12-20,
00:31but that is now five in a row for the Texas Rangers.
00:35For the 8-0-6.
00:36Are you worried at all that the Rangers win streak ends today
00:38after Skip comes on and he starts to resent you because of it?
00:42You know, I thought about this a lot.
00:45And at the risk of being blasphemous,
00:48could this be like the baseball creation story?
00:52So you win your sixth in a row,
00:54and then on the seventh day, a.k.a. Thursday,
00:58you rest.
01:01That's what I'm going to go with.
01:02Rest day.
01:03Thursday's rest day.
01:04Plus, I mean, you already won the first two.
01:06Might as well go out and get a sweep.
01:07Get back to 500.
01:09And the great thing about this is right now with this team,
01:12what are they doing?
01:14They're playing a lot of small ball to win these games.
01:18Yes.
01:18I mean, they're getting some of these doubles in the gaps,
01:20but they're getting floaters that drop in.
01:22They're getting base hits.
01:24Everybody is contributing to these things.
01:27That's what I like so much, too.
01:28It was tough last night seeing Higashioka have three hits last night,
01:34but also not have a lot of extra going on for him.
01:38But it was nice that he was getting on base and being part of it.
01:41And then you got the Jot Peterson, you got the top of the lineup,
01:44doing a really strong job.
01:46Skip last night talked about Peterson moving up there
01:49and how he credits Nemo for that.
01:51These are all positive things without Seager and Wyatt Langford.
01:56This is what I really want to dive in on is, hey,
01:58how important is it for these other guys to be feeling important to the lineup
02:04and like they are gaining their confidence without those guys in the lineup, too?
02:10Because whenever your extra role players, your 7, 8, 9s start doing this
02:14because some of these guys will move around, then you're starting to go,
02:17okay, now can we add this back to the lineup and be even better?
02:21So I think the answer is absolutely.
02:26That is vitally important.
02:28So you feel like it's an add-on and not a savior for those two, right?
02:32But let's take a look at the last five runs that the Rangers scored.
02:37So when you take the lead in the sixth, because you were talking about small ball,
02:41how does it break down?
02:43You get a walk, you get a productive ground out that moves the runner forward,
02:49and then that allows Osuna's single to score Jake Berger.
02:53Whereas if you wouldn't have gotten that productive out,
02:55like if it had been a pop-up or a strikeout or whatever,
02:58then you would have just moved Berger to second.
03:00But because you got the productive ground out, he was in position to score.
03:04You saw the same thing in the seventh.
03:09You got Higashioka with the double, and then a sack bunt to move him over to third,
03:14and then what happens?
03:15You get the sack fly.
03:17Even in the ninth inning, now I know part of this you can't necessarily count on,
03:21but you took advantage of it.
03:22Evan Carter got the walk.
03:24There was a wild pitch.
03:25And then how did the rest of the runs score?
03:28Single, single, sack fly.
03:31So what do you hear in those five runs?
03:33One extra base hit.
03:34Yep.
03:35And obviously no home runs.
03:37But what did you also hear in there?
03:39Productive out.
03:40Sacrifice.
03:41Walk.
03:42Wild pitch.
03:43Another sacrifice.
03:45Like that is the definition of what I know a lot of Rangers fans have wanted for a while
03:49because the offense in general has been struggling.
03:53Yeah, yeah.
03:53Just trying to contribute in some way, shape, or form.
03:57Last night, Evan Carter with a walk and a hit.
04:01Scores run.
04:02All these little ways to get on base, create the pressure, and make something happen
04:07are little ways that you can go from being a 5-4 loss to a 7-4 win.
04:14Right.
04:14And last night, listen, man, Nate was good.
04:18Still not the best version of him, though.
04:21Like, giving up 11 hits is not what you want to see.
04:23But also, you've got to think that that's a St. Louis team that wasn't happy about having the one run
04:27the night before.
04:28But there were moments when I was like, that's the Nate Evaldi that Skip was talking about,
04:32throwing the splitter on any count because he's confident in it.
04:36And then I was like, man, they're really getting after this thing just a little bit.
04:39But the bullpen comes in, does some pretty good work last night.
04:43Like, that was nice.
04:44There were some moments from Beeks where I was kind of concerned.
04:47And Skip last night was like, hey, look, Beeks has human moments, too.
04:51But he was really good when we needed him tonight.
04:53Did you want Lats to come in and close that out?
04:56Or were you okay with Jakob Yunus stepping up in there and doing his thing?
05:00At 7-4, I was fine going the other way because I knew you wouldn't let it go too far
05:05without Lats.
05:06Plus, you saved potentially Lats for today.
05:08If it was 5-4, absolutely.
05:09I would have been like, the hell are we doing?
05:11I don't need tryouts.
05:12I know who the closer is.
05:14But since you got it up to 7-4, I think I felt comfortable with that.
05:20I see multiple people talking about this.
05:23In addition to from the 4-0-5, when you guys said, let's go sweep the Cardinals, I thought you
05:27were drunk.
05:28We were.
05:29Okay.
05:30And yet, here we are.
05:31Uh-huh.
05:32From the 9-4-0, once Wyatt comes back, Carter can't see the field because Osuna is playing too well.
05:38Now, I think that's going to end up being more complicated than a lot of Rangers fans.
05:44Because I've seen that across the board.
05:46But Evan Carter is also playing exceptional, exceptional defense.
05:52And analytically, like if you look on the field, it does feel like Alejandro Osuna is doing a hell of
05:58a job.
05:58It really does.
05:59Analytically, I wonder how much they crunch those numbers.
06:02And they're like, eh, he's solid.
06:05But that's about it.
06:06And then if the defense for Carter will outweigh that.
06:09We can ask Skip again about it today.
06:10But I know last night, he essentially was like, hey, it's a good problem to have.
06:14No, absolutely.
06:15And his defense saves runs.
06:17It does.
06:18And you definitely, you know, granted, I've given them credit for playing some pretty good defense in this five-game
06:23stretch, too.
06:23Like, that's one of the other factors that's been a helpful thing for them is they're playing pretty clean baseball.
06:29And when you're doing that, Kevin, we've talked about that over and over.
06:31Got a shot.
06:32If you're playing clean baseball in these close games, it gives you a shot.
06:37If you're playing clean baseball and you're able to score runs, you're winning 7-4.
06:43You know, like, you're winning 7-2.
06:45Those are the differences whenever your offense is actually this productive.
06:48But you're also playing clean baseball.
06:50I don't know if it's just that it was the Royals and now here you are with some confidence going
06:56to it.
06:56At least the Cardinals are better.
06:58Or if there has been a shift in that clubhouse, because the confidence looks different, Kevin.
07:05Last night after that game was over, seeing Peterson and the guys kind of standing around, the excitement that was
07:12on their face,
07:13Jakob Yunus, I know it's Jacob Yunus, I just really enjoy saying it that way.
07:17Sounds way cooler.
07:18But, like, seeing the way that they looked.
07:20And winning helps.
07:21Winning helps you feel that way.
07:23But I wonder if there's a different preparation that they've done.
07:26And that's what I'm looking to talk to Skip about a little today is, is there a difference in their
07:30preparation right now?
07:32And whenever you start winning like this, how do you keep driving home whatever y'all have been doing is
07:38the right thing?
07:39You've got to keep kind of pounding on those guys, right?
07:41When it comes to the conversation of, guys, y'all did this, this, and this.
07:45That's why we won.
07:46Whatever y'all did before, you know, the focus is there right now.
07:50Or maybe, again, it is just part of their schedule that we didn't expect that would be good for them.
07:55You know, beating the Royals, we kind of thought that would be nice.
07:57But the way that they played before, I didn't think they'd sweep the Royals.
08:01Yeah, and I'm encouraged going into the Cardinals, because you're right.
08:04I would have backdated this, like, four series when I thought we were going to be awesome.
08:09Like, there's no way in hell I would have thought that you would have gone through the stretch that you
08:13just did
08:14and then be in position to take the series from the Cardinals.
08:18That just doesn't totally make sense.
08:20But then there's Chris Young last week on G-Bag, and he's like,
08:23I think that we're good enough to reel off six or eight wins.
08:26Right.
08:26He said that.
08:27Right.
08:28But we just haven't proven it yet.
08:29And then they're like, okay, I guess now's the time.
08:32Or maybe, Kevin, it had just gotten to a heightened point where they were like,
08:36they had hit rock bottom.
08:38That was their rock bottom, and they were like, all right, there's nothing but up from here.
08:41I hope so.
08:41And we're going to turn this thing around.
08:43I don't know exactly what the mentality of it is, but they looked bad.
08:47And right now, they look good.
08:49Yeah.
08:49And that's something that makes baseball a lot more fun.
08:51Yeah, absolutely.
08:52And you keep seeing, like, some little contributions here and there from Nicky Lopez,
08:57who is somebody that they had just essentially picked up, you know, off the street, more or less,
09:03for just about nothing.
09:04So I appreciate that they're able to excel in those sort of moves.
09:08And they're 30 and 31.
09:11If they were to win today, you can get back to 500, and then you have the off day.
09:18Yesterday, you pointed out they had been 29 and 31.
09:22So strange.
09:22So many years in a row.
09:24How many times have they been 30 and 31 since?
09:27You know what?
09:27That's a good...
09:28I did not do that.
09:29Are you going to track it like that?
09:29I probably should.
09:30Your brain's going to get fried by the end of the year trying to track that.
09:33That does feel like a thing that I would monitor.
09:36I didn't go deep dive into that, but perhaps now I really should.
09:40Sorry that I did that to you.
09:41No, no, no.
09:42That's a fair point.
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