Written by Grant Brisbee at SBNation.com
On Tuesday night, the Texas Rangers defeated the Los Angeles Angels, 5-4. On the surface, this would appear to be an unremarkable result. “First-place team beats last-place team” isn’t a headline that gets on the front page too often.
The win moved the Rangers’ record to 36-10 in one-run games.
There’s always a temptation to write about a team that’s having success in one-run games in, oh, June or July. The idea being that there’s no way it can last, and that they’re due for a little regression. It’s not quite like shooting fish in a barrel, but it’s at least like writing an article about how fish can’t survive long in a barrel after they’ve been shot. No one is enriched. No one wins.
And occasionally, the team in question doesn’t stop winning one-run games. Of note: The Rangers are 36-10 in one-run games. They have a chance to set a major league record. They are either an outlier or they’ve unlocked the secret skill that baseball explorers have been searching for over the centuries. They’ve found the Ark of the Covenant, and they’re selfishly using it to win one-run games instead of reversing climate change or powering a war machine.
Or they’re an outlier.
When you achieve extreme outlier status in baseball, it’s impossible for writers not to point it out. I’m a veteran of the Buck Showalter Is Just Cagier Than Other Managers War of 2012, in which the Orioles (29-9 in one-run games) were lucky, and their fans got angry with anyone who suggested the team was lucky. It turns out the 2012 Orioles were lucky. They were 20-31 the next season in one-run games, 32-23 the season after that, and 25-26 the season after that. There was no repeatable skill, harrumphed the extremely erudite baseball writer, and it’s very easy to dust off those old arguments and reuse them. For the environment.
On the other hand, you’re reading this because of the 1997 Giants. That was the team that turned me from a kid who grew up with baseball to an adult who was absolutely fanatical about it. And they were the luckiest team I’ll probably ever watch. They were outscored on the season, but they still won the division. They were 23-17 in one-run games, which is sort of a garden variety kind of luck, but all season I had to hear and read about how lucky they were. Ticked me off something fierce.
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