Odor scores in the 7th to give the Rangers the lead.

The 2015 campaign for the Texas Rangers came to a sudden halt yesterday afternoon with a 6-3 defeat that was much closer than that. Toronto advances to its first ALCS since 1993 and the Rangers once again fall just short in a game that will be remembered for the craziness that happened in the 7th inning. The Rangers finish 2015 as the AL West Champions for the 6th time in franchise history, but like the 1996,98, and 99 Rangers they just were not good enough to beat their opponent in the ALDS. In the 1990’s it was the Yankees and this season it was the Blue Jays. There were lots of positive to take away from this season. They were 8 games under .500 in May and 9 games back in the division, but came back to not only tie the Astros, but pass them in September and clinch the division on the last day of the season. A little bit of the future was revealed in the form of Joey Gallo, who displayed monumental power in his stint in the major leagues filling in for Adrian Beltre. Josh Hamilton and Mike Napoli both came back this season and contributed to helping this team come back. Pitching wise Martin Perez came back from Tommy John surgery and pitched well down the stretch and even pitched well enough in his first 5 innings of this start in game 3, but got hit in the 6th inning. Chi Chi Gonzalez showed that he is ready for a full-time role in 2016 as a starter. Mitch Moreland and Prince Fielder both bounced back from season ending injuries in 2014 to put up great numbers in 2015 and really lead the offense. Shin Soo Choo after talking with his wife at the All Star Break had his best half of baseball in a Rangers uniform and made himself into the best hitter in the Rangers lineup in September. Finally, Delino Deshields Jr. went from Rule 5 draft pick in December, to staying on the team to start the season so that the Rangers would not lose him, to pinch runner in April, to starting center fielder by June and one of the biggest surprises on the team. Deshields and Odor were the Rangers two best hitters in this ALDS. Speaking of Odor he started out the season swinging at everything and hitting nothing. The Rangers sent him down to AAA in May and he got to work. He came back in June and was a brand new guy. He showed discipline at the plate and made better contact and ended up with a better season than he had his rookie season and played great in the ALDS. He was making things happen with his legs and with his bat. He is going to be a great player for a long time with the Rangers and him and Andrus make a great double play combination. Unlike in 2011,2012, and 2013 when each of those were crushing losses where it didn’t feel like there was much to look forward to the next season, I can’t wait for February and March to get here and for the season to start. Before we get to that lets recap what the heck happened in that game yesterday.

Game 5 Recap

Game 5 was a normal game for 8 of the 9 innings. It started with a Deshields leading off with a double off of Marcus Stroman, like he did in Game 2, moving to third on a bunt, and then scoring on a fielder’s choice grounder by Prince Fielder. Collabello decided to come home but couldn’t quite hit Deshields who was running on contact and that made the score 1-0. Hamels was able to get through the first with no runs for the first time in 3 starts. Choo tacked on another run with a solo home run in the 3rd to make it 2-0. That would be it for the Rangers off of Stroman as he settled in after that. Hamels could not get the shut down inning as Ben Revere singled on a ball that deflected high off the glove of Cole Hamels and didn’t come down until he was already across the 1st base bag. Then he was moved to second on a groundout by Josh Donaldson and then Jose Bautista hit a double down the left field line to score him. That would be all the damage though and Hamels would retire the next 8 hitters until Edwin Encarnacion stepped up to the plate in the 6th and delivered a game-tying solo home run down the left field line. Hamels came back and got the next two hitters on strikeouts and had retired 10 of the last 11 hitters and still had a decent pitch count. The score was 2-2 and the bullpen was getting ready, but manager Jeff Bannister decided to stick with Hamels for the 7th. The Rangers had not mounted much of a threat in the last 3 innings and neither had the Jays. It looked like it could be a battle of the bullpens and Bannister wanted to wait as long as he could to go to his. Hamels came back for the 7th. Before we get to that though we must discuss the 7th inning in its own section.

7th Inning

This was the inning that determined the entire series. It was the inning that made everyone try to find their handy dandy MLB rulebook. There were two bench clearing incidents in this inning. There was fans throwing debris onto the field. There was an epic bat flip. It was an inning that had it all and it started innocently enough. Roughned Odor led of the inning with a single. The score was still 2-2. Chris Giminez was able to move him to second on a sac bunt. Deshields moved him over to third on a weakly hit groundball to third. There were two outs in the inning and Odor was standing on third base with Shin Soo Choo at the plate. This is when the craziness began. It was a 2-2 count when Russell Martin got the ball and went to throw it back to the pitcher when the ball hit off of Choo’s bat and rolled down the 3rd base line. Odor came down the line and scored, but the umpire ruled the play dead and ordered Odor back to third. Bannister came onto the field and demanded that it was a live ball and Odor should have allowed to score. Choo was not interferring with the throw and was not over the plate. The umpires got together and met and the decision they came to was that Bannister was right it was a live ball and Odor was given the run to make it 3-2 Rangers. This is the rule that was cited by MLB that applied to the play.

John Gibbons and the Blue Jays players were furious as were the fans. It started what was an 18 minute delay as the umpires met multiple times to discuss it, they even called New York to get clarification on the rule, and came to the same conclusion that it was a live ball and the Rangers scored. Fan littered the field with trash from all over and threw their beers and police had to be brought in to provide security on the field. After all of that though the game was still 3-2 and the Rangers now stood with 9 outs left to get in order to advance to the ALCS. Choo ended up striking out in his at-bat. As I said before Bannister decided to stick with Hamels for the 7th inning. Hamels rewarded his thought by getting three straight ground balls, but unfortunately the Rangers did not turn any of those ground balls into outs. The inning got off to a bad start when Elvis Andrus let a bouncing ball clank off of his glove as he closed it too soon allowing Russell Martin to reach first. The next ball was hit by Kevin Pillar to Mitch Moreland who decided to try to get Martin at second but bounced the ball and Andrus could not pick it. The next was a sac bunt by Ryan Goins that the Rangers ran a perfect wheel play on and Beltre fielded it and threw it to Andrus who dropped it. Instead of being out of the inning the bases were loaded with nobody out. Ben Revere then came up and hit a sharp grounder to Mitch Moreland who threw home to get Dalton Pompey, who had to come in to pinch run for Martin. The score is still 3-2 bases loaded with one out. Jeff Bannister then decides to go get his ground ball specialist Sam Dyson to try and get a ground ball double play to end the inning or just a ground ball. Josh Donaldson, the Jays MVP candidate, was up at the plate and on a 2-0 count hit a flare over the head of Odor. On the play Odor froze for a split second as he misread how the deep the ball was going to go, and it cost him as he came within feet of catching the ball. The ball hit in shallow center and Odor ran it down and threw out Revere at 2nd. Revere had though Odor was going to catch it and went back to 1st. Odor retrieved the ball and threw it Andrus who did catch this one for the second out. It is a tie game runners on 1st and 3rd with two outs and Jose Bautista at the plate. Sam Dyson had not given up a home run since August and so the team had to like their chances to get out of the inning with it still tied. He started off Bautista 1-1, when this happened.

Bautista hit the biggest home run in Toronto Blue Jays history since Joe Carter hit his walkoff home run in the 1993 World Series. He also had the most epic bat flip ever and I guess in that situation with what it meant to the team I could see why he would do it. I could also see why the Rangers would get mad. Sam Dyson took great offense to that and told Edwin Encarnacion about it as he was coming to the plate. That prompted both benches to empty. Words were said, angry faces were made, and like most baseball fights nothing actually happened. The Rangers face the Blue Jays 6 times in May next year, 3 on the road to begin the month and 3 the next week at home. I would not be surprised at all if the Rangers decided to hit Bautista at some point in those 6 games. To finish the 7th, Encarnacion singled, Collabello singled and then finally Dyson was able to get Tulowitzki to pop out to the catcher to end the inning. It was one of the craziest innings that I have ever seen. It saw the Rangers go up 3-2 on a play that I have never seen and then make 3 errors in an inning for the first time all season. They had only made 2 the entire series before that. That led to them giving up 4 runs and the lead. In all it lasted 53 minutes and will be what this game and likely this series is remembered for. Unfortunately the Rangers came out of the inning trailing.

There is several things you could say about this inning. First the Rangers did get lucky to score the go ahead run. I bet in Russell Martin’s long career he has never hit a players’ bat on a throw back to the pitcher. They made several bad decisions and bad plays. Elvis has to get that ground ball. It bounced on the turf like it has the whole series. Mitch should have seen he did not have a good angle to throw it to Andrus and should have just got the out at first. The wheel play was called and ran perfectly except Andrus has to catch it. I have to believe that dropping the ground ball and the dropping the throw from Mitch was still on his mind and he couldn’t focus on catching the ball from Beltre. That is the only thing that makes sense to why he dropped the ball there. Finally. Odor has to immediately break back on the ball. He misread it and cost them. When you give a great offensive team like the Blue Jays 7 outs in an inning they are going to make you pay and they did. I knew something like Bautista’s home run was going to happen. I wasn’t sure if it would be him or Donaldson, but I knew one of them would hit it out.

The Conclusion

Even after all of that there was still two innings left. The Rangers did give themselves a chance to tie this game in the 8th inning. Prince Fielder led off with a single, but was thrown out on a force out at second. Adrian Beltre was on first when Mitch Moreland walked. That is when Gibbons went to his bullpen to get his young closer Roberto Osuna to face Josh Hamilton and Elvis Andrus. Hamilton had a great at-bat. He worked the count from 0-2 to a full count. He fouled off multiple pitches, but then struck out on a tailing 97 mph fastball. Then Andrus in an opportunity to redeem himself for his two errors in the 7th came up with a chance to tie this game and make people forget about the errors. He fouled off multiple 97 mph fastballs. He was almost on it and then Osuna threw him a slider on the outside corner that he swung and missed at. That was pretty much the game. Osuna came back in the 9th and finished it off by getting pinch hitter Will Venable to swing and miss. Just like that the season was over. The Blue Jays came running on to the field to celebrate, while the Rangers will have all off season to ponder what could have been. They had two chances to clinch at home and could not get it done. At the end of the day though the Blue Jays were the better team and I still believe they will make it to the World Series. The Blue Jays-Royals ALCS is going to be great. They were the two best teams in the AL and rightly should be playing for a chance to play in the World Series.

So what happens now for the Rangers? Instead of moving forward to playing in the ALCS, they are coming back to Arlington to clean out their lockers and head home, recuperate, and then start to get ready for the 2016 season. I think a game like this is going to be hard on Elvis Andrus. The only way he can move past this is to continue to work this offseason on his hitting and have a great season next year and have postseason success if the Rangers make it. Unfortunately it is part of the Rangers postseason history much like David Freese’s 2 run double and walk off home run in Game 6 of the 2011 World Series is. The way I look at all of this is that it will make when the Rangers actually do win a World Series that much sweeter. I believe that the Rangers do have about a 3 year window to do that. The window on this season though is closed and we now anxiously await for February to get here. In the mean time I will still write about the Rangers. I am going to do a season in review next week, starting with April and then going month by month. Then after the World Series is over I will do a Rangers offseason preview discussing needs, Rangers free agents, Qualifying Offer(QO) candidates, potential players on the trade block, and what I think the Rangers will do. I am still sad to see this season end. It was one of the most enjoyable that the Rangers have given me. I rank it up there with 1996, 2004, and 2010. All seasons that they were not expected to have the level of success that they had. Hopefully next year at this time we will be celebrating a birth in the ALCS  instead of discussing another missed opportunity.