So that didn't go the way we'd all hoped it would.
For the third straight year, the National League won the All-Star Game despite being seemingly overmatched on paper. Guys with 20 home runs? The AL had 7. Starting pitchers who won league MVP honors? The AL had one, the NL had zero. It most definitely wasn't supposed to go the way it did, with the NL scoring five runs in the first inning off of said AL MVP Justin Verlander en route to an 8-0 victory and another year of having homefield advantage in the World Series.
But if you're the Texas Rangers, your response should simply be, "Oh well."
The Rangers have the second best record in the league, by a half-game under the New York Yankees, and they've done that despite having three-fifths of their starting rotation on the disabled list over the past month and a half or so, as well as a two key pieces of their bullpen in Alexi Ogando and Koji Uehara. They've also been without first baseman Mitch Moreland, who was starting to hit the ball well and is by far the best defensive option on the club at first, for more than a month. Yet, they still have that record and they're still in first place in the AL West by four games over the Los Angeles Angels.
The Rangers are good. Really good. And they're only going to get better as they start getting these missing pieces back to their lineup and pitching staff.
Elvis Andrus said come October, if his team is lucky/good enough to be in their straight World Series, they won't be worrying about the fact that they lost an exhibition game back in July.
"If we've got a chance to go for a third time, I don't think we're going to care or think about the fact we don't have home-field advantage," Andrus told reporters. "The World Series is the World Series. You still have to win games on the road. They played better than us. They played really well from the first inning on. They deserved it."
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So yeah, whoever represents the National League in the World Series, be it the Los Angeles Dodgers, Washington Nationals, Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals, Atlanta Braves, or whoever it is, will be playing Games 1 and 2 at home and get Games 6 and 7 at home if it gets that far. But the Rangers shouldn't be concerned with that, and it doesn't seem that they are.
