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Heaven Help Us: Rangers Overlooked a Sign from Above by Playing Weekend Series against Seattle

A seemingly eternally-cursed franchise received a bit of heaven-sent help last week.

The Rangers, true to their star-crossed history, ignored it. And you know what they say: It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

When this season is officially put away for the winter, the ultimate reason it will be the 10th consecutive season without a playoff appearance is going to sting a lot. Like hard raindrops in a stiff, cold wind. It will sting not because of anything the Rangers did on the field. It very likely will be because of what they did to the field. In an effort to preserve the integrity of the home schedule – and to keep the gate money – the Rangers implored the hard-working grounds crew to somehow got the field playable enough for three games with Seattle on a weekend when nearly 9.5 inches of rain fell on Arlington. That they did is a testament to the grounds crew. That the Rangers played, though, is a testament to the business of baseball and nothing else.

The Rangers lost two of those three games and have been sleep-walking ever since. If they aren’t careful, they are about to step right off a cliff and out of what remains of the AL playoff races. Now, some four days after the flood, it’s at least worth considering whether the Rangers simply should have simply accepted the watery gift they received as a blessing and played the three games in Seattle at the end of the season when their roster was back at full strength.

The simple answer is no. Home games are precious, too, and they aren’t to be tossed about willy-nilly. The Rangers are 16 games over .500 at home – even after losing their last three. They are a .500 club on the road.

As always seems to be the case with this team, though, nothing is as simple as it sounds.

Even before the Rangers returned home to start a swing through the AL West that is to culminate with a three-game showdown against the Angels this weekend, the heavens were playing havoc with them. The Rangers sat through a long rain delay in Cleveland on Labor Day and rescheduled as part of a twi-night doubleheader the next day. That would allow the Indians, who are out of the race and in it for the money, to maximize their gate from a mid-week September game. It also meant the Rangers would have to play three times in 19 hours because the game following the hastily scheduled doubleheader was set for noon on Sept. 9. Amazingly, the Rangers swept through the three games, scoring at least 10 runs in all three and then headed home for the big homestand.

After an off-day, the Rangers arrived at Rangers Ballpark and sat through two and a half hours of delays before the game was called and rescheduled as part of a doubleheader on Sunday. On Saturday, with a crummy forecast, the Rangers somehow found enough of a window to start the game, but it began raining midway through a loss that included an hour long delay at the tail end. The doubleheader on Sunday, scheduled for noon, didn’t get underway until five. That will throw off your body clock a bit. The Rangers won the first game, but have scored exactly one run since. They simply look like a team that hasn’t recovered from a hectic week’s worth of scheduling and rescheduling.

They have fallen 5.5 games back in the wild card, their biggest deficit of the year in that race. They haven’t made up an inch of ground in the AL West race (a six-game deficit), even though Los Angeles has lost three of its last four.

“You are prepared to play every single day,” said OF David Murphy of the lost weekend. “It does get tougher, though, when you are constantly just sitting around the clubhouse. At the same time, Seattle had to deal with it, too. I’m not going to say that it didn’t affect us, but there are some things we need to learn to overcome. We’ve just been flat.”

So, now, in hindsight, it’s easy to question whether the Seattle series should have been played at all.

The biggest reason to say “yes” is financial. And financial reasons are a huge part of why the Rangers do anything these days, especially since MLB is holding a $15 million IOU from the troubled Hicks Sports Group.

Had the series, or any part thereof, been postponed, the Rangers only viable option was to play them in Seattle as part of the last series of the season.The Rangers would have been the designated “home” team for any makeup games in Seattle, but they also would have lost out on significant gate receipts. Staring a very austere offseason budget in the face, the Rangers need to make as much money as possible in September to avoid more drastic limitations.

Also, three doubleheaders in three days would have potentially had a negative impact on the Rangers’ readiness for the post-season. About that, we have this to say: Before the Rangers can concern themselves with what their chances in the post-season, they first have to qualify for the post-season. In hindsight, it seems like their best chance at qualifying for the post-season would have involved calling the weekend’s games as soon as possible, agreeing to play them in Seattle and waiting to get their roster back to full strength.

Shifting the entire series to Seattle, if necessary, wouldn’t have been nearly as burdensome to the Rangers playoff hopes as it sounds. First, there is every possibility that Michael Young and Josh Hamilton will both be back and both at full strength by then. Second, there is this mathematical equation: No games in Arlington + six games in Seattle in three days = Only one start against Felix Hernandez. Finally, there is the motivation. If the Rangers were still legitimately in the race come those three days, the Mariners, just looking to go home, would have approached the games with all the enthusiasm of getting a Swine Flu shot.

Instead, the Rangers did great work at getting the field in shape and at getting the games in on the dates that were originally scheduled.

Sadly, their reward may just end up being another October vacation.