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It’s Sweeps Week for the Rangers

Weather update (2 pm): Forecast calls for decreasing chance of rain in Arlington this afternoon/evening.

ARLINGTON - By baseball definitions, a long winning streak is one of six or more games. It means the team has gone more than once through its rotation without a loss. In most cases it means a loss-free week.

The Rangers longest streak this season is seven games in May.

It’s time for them to repeat that.

As ugly as the AL West and wild card standings look after a long, wet weekend that saw the Rangers drop two of three to Seattle, this week provides them an opportunity to reset those standings and to jump back into the thick of one or both races with two weeks remaining in the season. All it takes is one hot week.

Here’s why:

• Every time the Rangers win this week, they are going to be gaining on somebody ahead of them in one of the races. Even if the Angels win today’s makeup game in New York, the Rangers would gain on the idle Red Sox. Then, Tuesday through Thursday, Los Angeles visits Boston. Somebody has to lose each of those games. Over the weekend, the Rangers host the Angels. Repeat after me: Every Rangers win in that series is another game they pick up in the AL West standings.

• In the wild card race, sweeping the week would insure the Rangers, at the very worst, lose no ground on Boston.  That would leave them no worse than four games back in the wild card with two weeks to play. Four back is a lot with 14 games remaining, you say? That’s true, but if the Rangers win the week and are four back in the wild card, they’d be no worse than one-half game back in the AL West. Because for Boston to not lose any ground uner that scenario, the Red Sox would have swept the Angels. And if the Angels lose tonight’s makeup game in New York and get swept by Boston and the Rangers, guess what? Texas would have a half-game lead in the AL West.

• In the AL West, a six-game winning streak would mean the Rangers would be no worse than 3.5 games behind in the division, with four games at the Angels looming in the last week of the season. But under that scenario, in which the Angels sweep Boston and the Rangers sweep the Angels, Texas could be no worse than a single game behind the Red Sox in the wild card standings.

Of course, the flip side is that anything less than a winning week means the Rangers will almost assuredly lose ground to one of the teams ahead of them and, in a worst-case scenario, essentially make the last two weeks meaningless. It’s a huge week. And every Ranger win carries with it double value somewhere in the standings. So all the Rangers have to do is go out and win. Do that and the standings will take care of themselves.