The Texas Rangers won their first-ever World Series after defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-0 in Game 5 of the Fall Classic on Wednesday for a 4-1 series win.
Both teams were held scoreless through six innings, with the Texans not having a hit during that span against D-back Zach Gallen. Nathan Eovaldi bent but never broke as he routinely got out of tough jams to throw six shutout innings and eventually get the win.
However, Texas got on the board in the seventh after the Rangers hit Mitch Garver’s RBI single that scored Corey Seager.
Texas held that 1-0 lead into the ninth before breaking it with a four-run home run. Jonah Heim’s single to center field scored two goals after outfielder Alec Thomas accidentally got the ball.
Marcus Semien later drove the Heim home with a two-run homer to seal the game.
Josh Spurs closed the door in the ninth, bringing the Rangers to their first World Series trophy since entering Major League Baseball as the Washington Senators in 1961.
Texas didn’t even make the playoffs until 1996 and suffered major postseason heartbreak in 2011 after coming just one short of defeating the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.
But the Rangers are now on top of the baseball world after a playoff run that included sweeps of the Toronto Blue Jays and Baltimore Orioles, a hard-fought seven-game ALCS win over the Houston Astros and an emphatic World Series victory over the upstart Diamondbacks in five. Fans call them the “Team of Destiny” after their impressive postseason run.
Texas has endured a tough road to get to this point.
Their best hitter, Seager, missed 43 games largely due to thumb and hamstring injuries.
The team’s best player, Jacob deGrom, started just six games before suffering a tear in his right elbow that forced him to undergo Tommy John surgery.
Texas also started hot but was only three games over .500 after May. The Rangers just had to fight to make the playoffs, but they found themselves down two and a half games with only four games remaining. A three-out-of-four loss in Seattle resulted in Texas losing its lead in the AL West via tiebreaker to Houston, meaning the Rangers had to get to the World Series the hard way via the wild card.
But Texas then cruised through the first two rounds and knocked off the defending World Series champions in Houston before winning its first AL pennant in 12 years.
In the World Series, the Rangers lost the best player in baseball, right fielder Adelis Garcia, to… Tense perverted After Game 3. Star pitcher and mid-season acquisition Max Scherzer was also lost to the series due to back spasms that forced him to leave Game 3 after three innings.
Despite it all, Texas endured and beat Arizona 11-7 in Game 4 before shutting out the D-backs in Game 5.
Simply put, this was a well-deserved World Series win for a resilient team. The Rangers got a great performance from Seager, the reigning World Series MVP, and a host of other players in the batting order, starting rotation, and bullpen to pull off a remarkable team win.
Manager Bruce Bochy also deserves credit after winning his fourth World Series title after three victories in San Francisco (2010, 2012, 2014). In addition, Will Smith became the first player ever to win a World Series in three consecutive years Three different teams (Atlanta Braves, Astros, Rangers).
And so the 2023 baseball season is over. Congratulations to the mighty Rangers team that is well positioned to be a perennial playoff contender for the foreseeable future. Twenty-nine other teams now find themselves chasing the Texans, and they’ll have a chance to act on that soon enough as the hot stove season begins in earnest.
