Adam Bremner
Staff Writer

Last night, courtesy of Edgar Renteria’s home run in the top of the seventh inning, the Texas Rangers’ historic and miraculous postseason came to a solemn end as the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in convincing fashion.

Entering the franchise’s first ever fall classic, everything looked up; they had just crushed the evil empire (New York Yankees) and were facing a team, presumably inferior, that barely clinched the playoffs. Despite high praise and craze for the best Ranger team in history, the team fell flat on their face in almost all phases of the game: fielding, pitching (though sometimes effective) and most importantly, hitting.

The Giants just came ready for each challenge in their way and the Rangers did not. The Giants got clutch hitting and excellent pitching while the Rangers gave up 34 runs in five games and could not submit a timely hit to salvage the series.

The Rangers bats were so non-existent that the leading batter was 9th hole hitter and rookie first baseman Mitch Moreland, who was the sole reason the team even stayed alive through game 5. The money makers in the middle of the lineup- Young, Hamilton, Guerrero and Kinsler (excluding Cruz’s effort)- went silent during the season and ultimately proved to be the difference. The Rangers’ abilities at the plate were supposed to give the club a boost to the World Series, not be its achilles heel. If you want to look at a reason for this lack of production, it may be that they were finally the favorite rather than the underdog. Regardless, the claws and antlers were not well advertised to a national audience of 20 million to say the least.

On the bright side, the season was a success for a once terrible organization, undoubtedly, the best Arlington has ever seen. Just because they lost this year, does not mean they can’t win it all next year as defending ALCS champs.