64-66 – Rangers remain buns with the bats, fall 3-0 to Angels

The Texas Rangers did not score but the Anaheim Angels scored three runs.

The Rangers were honoring the 1996 club tonight. A lot can change in 30 years, apparently.

Unlike this year’s team, the ’96ers are a version of this franchise that I hold near and dear to my heart, so hopefully the players who made it out didn’t stick around to watch this one. They wouldn’t recognize whatever the 2026 team does on the home synthetic field as the same sport as the one that they played over at The Ballpark on their way to the first AL West championship in team history.

The ’96 squad averaged just a smidge over ten hits per game and scored 928 runs. The 2026 team is sitting at 516 runs scored this season and added none to that tally tonight. The current year Rangers haven’t scored in a regulation inning since Thursday, have now been shut out twice this week against a couple of teams with a combined record of 113-148, and have scored two or fewer runs in all but one game this week on this homestand.

Texas‘ big output this week was scoring five runs in Tuesday’s victory. The ’96 team averaged 5.7 runs per game.

Anyway, here in the present, in unrecognizable baseball land, Zach Neto doubled on the second pitch of the game, the first of three extra base hits for the Anaheim leadoff man, and the first of ten hits for the Angels overall. The Rangers, meanwhile, had one single all evening.

Player of the Game: I guess No. 8 hitter Cody Freeman for collecting Texas’ lone hit — a single in the bottom of the sixth — to prevent the club from getting no-hit by a guy with a 6+ ERA in front of the team’s first ever playoff squad.

Up Next: The Rangers and Angels close out this series tomorrow where RHP Cal Quantrill will make the start for Texas opposite a pitcher to be named for Anaheim.

The Sunday afternoon first pitch from The Shed is set for 1:35 pm CDT and you can view it on the Rangers Sports Network.