Blue Jays Dishearten Rangers in Game 1 of ALDS

By Djack

Rangers are the top team in the AL, they finished the season with a record of 95-67, but if you watched today's game you wouldn't believe it. They came into tonight as the favorite to win this series, mostly in part to their regular season success, and the Blue Jays question marks in the pitching staff. Well, the Toronto pitching staff concerns have been put to bed, Marco Estrada pitched an absolute gem, and Stroman had a very good outing on Tuesday in the Wildcard game. They have J.A. Happ pitching tomorrow, he's been their best pitcher on the staff all season, if he can carry that into game 2 the Rangers are going to be in some big trouble. Rangers had postseason stud Cole Hamels taking the bump today, very few active pitchers have more experience or success in the postseason than this guy. Tonight was a different story, the Blue Jays hit Hamels, and they hit him hard. The third inning is where his downfall began, he let up five runs after already having two outs in the inning, granted there was two plays in the inning that should've been outs, Beltre missed a line drive by Donaldson that was smoked over his head but still hit off his glove. The bigger error of the inning was a deep fly ball to center field hit by Troy Tulowitzki, Ian Desmond who isn't a pure breed outfielder didn't track the ball well whatsoever, it dropped in, bounced off the wall over his head, and it allowed three runs to score. Hamels struggles continued in the 4th as he let up a homerun to Melvin Upton Jr. and a RBI single before being taken out, but the damage had already been done. At this point it was 7-0, Marco Estrada was cruising and was showing no signs of slowing down, and after 3 1/3 innings the Rangers were already into their bullpen so the Blue Jays had this game on lock. Jose Bautista would throw a little salt in the wound by hitting a three run dinger to make it 10-0 in the 9th, just a little bit of payback for the incident that occurred back in may. Bautista had a monster game recording 4 RBI's as he continues his reign of terror in the playoffs. Marco Estrada was player of the game though, he pitcher 8 1/3 innings, allowing one run that came in the bottom of the ninth, 4 hits, struck out 6, and got a big W in game 1 against a very strong Rangers lineup. Yu Darvish takes the mound tomorrow for the Rangers making his second postseason start, his first came in 2012, and he lost that game so he's a very inexperienced postseason pitcher. The Rangers need a great start out of him which is going to be tough against a hot Blue Jays offense, if the Rangers lose this game the season is over for them because they're not walking into the Rogers Center and winning two games. J.A. Happ on the other hand has pitched in 4 different postseason, those were over 7 years ago though so it's been awhile for him. It doesn't get any easier for the Rangers as they take on the Jays best regular season pitcher, and they have a somewhat inconsistent Yu Darvish taking the mound. Time to start sweating Rangers fans, it's looking like a classic Texas choke.