They say everything is bigger in Texas. This year, that includes the number of teams heading into the MLB playoffs.
For the first time since 1999, and only the third time ever, the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros will both participate in the postseason, with the Rangers going in as division champs and the Astros as the second American League wild-card team.
Texas secured its first AL West crown since 2011 with a decisive 9-2 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on the final day of the regular season. At the same time (literally, as all of Sunday's contests occurred simultaneously), Houston lost 5-3 to the Arizona Diamondbacks, but snuck into the dance for the first time since 2005 because the Angels lost.
In a sense, then, Houston should thank its in-state rival. Yes, the Rangers snatched first place, a position the Astros held for much of the season, but Texas also pulled the 'Stros along by defeating the Halos.
Regardless of the particulars, the bottom line is this: Both of the Lone Star State's baseball squads are playoff bound. Coming into spring, basically no one saw that coming.
OK, sure, somewhere there's a guy in a threadbare Nolan Ryan jersey who believed from the beginning. But most of us media types would have called this scenario far-fetched at best.
None of ESPN's prognosticators tapped either Texas or Houston to snag so much as a wild-card berth, let alone win the West outright. Sports Illustrated ranked the Rangers the No. 24 team in baseball (out of 30), one slot ahead of the Rangers.
Houston was supposed to be a team of the future, blessed with burgeoning talent but still emerging from a stretch of futility that included three consecutive 100-loss seasons between 2011 and 2013.
Texas, meanwhile, was coming off a disappointing, injury-riddled 2014 campaign and lost ace Yu Darvish to Tommy John surgery in March.
The idea that these franchises would be jostling for first place was borderline absurd, as USA Today's Jorge L. Ortiz spelled out:
For one, the clubs have been division rivals for only three years, with the Astros switching leagues in 2013. And since they began playing each other in 2001, only once—11 years ago—have both finished with winning records. Before this season, hardly anybody would have put money on this year marking the second such occurrence, as both teams wound up more than 20 games under .500 in 2014.
So they exceeded expectations, to say the least.
Each team's offense finished among the AL's top five in runs scored. Houston did it by launching 230 long balls, tied for first with the big-bashing Toronto Blue Jays. And Texas rode veterans Prince Fielder, Adrian Beltre, Mitch Moreland and Shin-Soo Choo, its resurgent "big four," as Adam Boedeker of NBC DFW dubbed them.
Houston's pitching staff, anchored by ace and Cy Young contender Dallas Keuchel, paced the Junior Circuit in ERA. Texas, meanwhile, has an ace up its sleeve after nabbing stud southpaw Cole Hamels in a deadline deal with the Philadelphia Phillies.
At the time, Joel Sherman of the New York Post expressed the popular sentiment when he suggested the trade was more about the future than the present. The Rangers were under .500 on July 31, after all.
"Texas envisions [Darvish] coming back from Tommy John surgery next year to team atop the rotation with Hamels," Sherman wrote.
That's undoubtedly still true. But now, the Rangers can also dream about Hamels, who twirled a complete game on Sunday, pitching them deep into October in the here and now.
"What we went through to get to this point, unbelievable," Moreland said after the clincher, per T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com. "We went through a lot of adversity just to come out to where we are on the last game of the season."
If you're in a glass-half-empty mood, you could point out that Texas faces a tough ALDS matchup against a potent Toronto club that won the season series against the Rangers and will doubtless come in as heavy favorites.
For their part, the Astros missed an opportunity to wrest home-field advantage away from the New York Yankees, who lost on Sunday. Now, the 'Stros must travel to the Big Apple on Tuesday for the do-or-die AL Wild Card Game.
The Astros will send Keuchel to the hill, per MLB.com's Brian McTaggart. He'll be opposed by Yanks ace Masahiro Tanaka, who recently battled a hamstring issue and has surrendered six runs in 11 innings over his last two starts, both New York losses.
But Houston would have been much better off playing at Minute Maid Park, as its dismal 33-48 road record attests.
Forget all that for now, though. For the first time in the 21st century, the big league postseason features a Texas tandem. In fact, with two Missouri teams and two New York teams also making it in, three states account for 60 percent of the the 2015 playoff entrants.
Texas' representatives, however, are the most unlikely. No one gave them a shot a scant six months ago, and there were doubters until the end. But here they are anyway, drenched in champagne after Game 162.
Regardless of what happens next, that's a big deal—even by Texas standards.
All statistics current as of Oct. 4 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.
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