What’s more surprising. That the Rangers are 2-0 in extra-inning games this year? Or that they have played only two extra-inning games?

Maybe that’s the secret to getting off this treadmill of mediocracy. Be tied after nine innings.

Texas sent out its five-inning man, MacKenzie Gore to start the game. True to form, he went five innings. He gave up eight runs and three walks in those five innings, somehow escaping all that traffic with giving up only two runs.

It took two former Royals to beat the Royals: Nicky Lopez and Elias Diaz.

Lopez played his first five seasons with Kansas City, since then bouncing around to the Braves, White Sox, Angels, and Cubs the past three seasons before being picked up by the Rangers on waivers. Diaz played 10 games with the Royals this season before being DFAed. Texas picked him up with Danny Jansen went on the IL. 

Lopez doubled and scored the first Rangers run. Diaz doubled and scored the go-ahead Rangers run in the tenth.

Texas is now undefeated in extras. But now find themselves at the dreaded one-game-under .500 mark.

Let’s play ten today.

*****