It was a really good sports night (one NBA moment notwithstanding), in what has been a bad sports month.

For me, at least.

Some of you are Cubs fans. I know that. And you were pulling for a different former Rangers pitcher from the one I was pulling for. That’s cool. I get it.

Some of you can’t bring yourself, under any circumstances, to pull for the Yankees.

I’m the same, with one very clear exception that I have zero hesitation about.

It took 40 years for the Rangers to be involved in a legitimate rivalry. And it’s a good one. A really good one. And now I’m supposed to set that aside? No chance.

Some of you lean on “state pride,” but for me that’s not a factor in pro sports.

For me, it was a really good night of baseball. Yu Darvish — who, like his mound opponent, has nothing but positive things to say about his pitching coaches in Texas — did exactly what was envisioned nearly six years ago when the Rangers stepped out at a level no other team could match, absolutely dominating a playoff game (and, incidentally, “driving” in as many runs as he surrendered).

And Houston — opponent-irrespective — lost.

Dialing ahead one month, for a moment:

We’re now ready to start taking reservations for the 13th Annual Newberg Report Night (Day) at Globe Life Park, which will be on Saturday, November 18.

This year our event will benefit the hurricane relief effort in Puerto Rico, a region that the Rangers have a widespread and long-standing history with. The event will likely begin late that morning and go into mid-afternoon.

Newberg Report Night will include our usual extensive program in the Hall of Fame Theater, featuring a roundtable Q&A with sports injury expert Will Carroll, Rangers beat writer Levi Weaver, and local minor league junkie Michael Tepid, followed by our annual Q&A session with Rangers GM Jon Daniels, plus our yearly memorabilia raffle/auction, conducted by local professional auctioneer Bret Richards. If you have items you want to donate to the auction, please let me know.

This will be the first year that we’ve done this outside the season — I’m responsible for that, as I couldn’t get my act together in July or August like I’m normally able to do — and so, unlike other years, admission will be at a single price point: $20 per person.

We typically have from 250 to 350 people attend this event every year. Once we reach Hall of Fame Theater capacity, we’ll have to close registration. Many years we’ve sold the event out in less than 24 hours, and so I would strongly recommend that you make your reservations as soon as you know you’ll be attending. (Payment details below.)

This is a very kid-friendly event.

Here’s what we tentatively have planned (the details tend to get better as we get closer to the event):

10:30 Doors open

We’ll gather in the Hall of Fame Theater on the south side of the Ballpark.

You’ll have the opportunity in the lobby to make a donation to our designated charitable cause, which this year will be an organization supporting the disaster relief effort in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria (I’m working on identifying which organization to team up with). You can donate any amount; for every $10 you donate, you will get one ticket for a memorabilia raffle we’ll have during the event.

As usual, I would recommend getting there as early as you can in order to get a good spot in the auditorium. Some of you will have to stand — the theater capacity includes not only the room’s 235 permanent seats but also extra folding chairs (not pictured below) and standing room.

11:00 Roundtable Q&A featuring Will Carroll, Levi Weaver, and Michael Tepid

As the theater fills up, Will, Levi, and Michael will field your questions on the Rangers and on sports injuries. These are really smart baseball guys with an 80-grade sense of humor (maybe 70 in Tepid’s case), and this portion of the event has been fantastic every year. Will and Michael return; this will be Levi’s first time with microphone foisted. Should be fun.

12:00 Raffle/auction, charitable presentation

As we’ve always done, we use this event to raise money for charitable efforts, including through your purchase of raffle tickets that day. For every $10 you donate, you will get one ticket for the raffle. Whoever makes the largest donation at the event will get his or her choice of any of the prizes. The remaining prizes will be raffled off.

We’ll then also have a number of special items to put up for a quick live auction, presided over by award-winning auctioneer Bret Richards. If you have anything you’d like to donate to the event to be raffled or auctioned off to raise money for the Puerto Rico hurricane relief effort, please let me know as soon as possible.

As usual, among the things that will be up for auction, aside from a bunch of autographed baseball memorabilia, will be plenty of “experiences” with local Rangers and sports radio media — such as lunch with play-by-play legends Eric Nadel and Brad Sham, a round of golf with Rangers TV broadcasters Dave Raymond and Tom Grieve, a 2018 behind-the-scenes tour of Rangers pregame/postgame TV show at Globe Life Park (including a meet & greet with that night’s analysts), and a 2018 RoughRiders package for group of 25, including a pregame meet & greet with the players and coaches, and lazy river (with premium food and drinks) throughout the game.

This list is growing fast.

After the auction we’ll make a quick charitable presentation.

1:00 Jon Daniels Q&A

While it’s not possible this far out to guarantee his availability, Rangers GM Jon Daniels is expected to join us, as he has the 12 previous Newberg Report Nights, for a lengthy Q&A session. The Saturday event is two days after the weeklong GM Meetings in Orlando conclude, and three weeks before the Winter Meetings, in what is a lock to be a very busy and important off-season. JD’s time with us should be fascinating, and his willingness to continue meeting with our group is always appreciated.

If you’ve ever been to one of our events, you know how extraordinarily open and honest JD is with us. This is a really unique opportunity, one of my favorite days on the baseball calendar every year — and as JD has told us in the past, one of his as well.

Jon is expected to arrive around 1:00 and take your questions in the theater for about an hour and 30 minutes.

Again, please sign up as you know you’ll be coming. Spots are first come, first served — your spot is only locked in once I receive payment — and again, in many recent years we’ve sold out in less than 24 hours. Given the opportunity to help with the hurricane relief effort and to spend a full 90 minutes talking with JD, I’m expecting this year’s to sell out quickly.

The cost, once again, is just $20, and you can pay in one of two ways:

• You can order by credit card through PayPal by going to www.paypal.com, selecting the “Send money” option, and typing in GJSneaker@sbcglobal.net where you are prompted for the e-mail account.

• Or you can send a check or money order, payable to “Jamey Newberg,” to:

Jamey Newberg

Vincent Serafino Geary Waddell Jenevein, P.C.

1601 Elm Street, Suite 4100

Dallas, TX 75201

If you’re paying by check, I’d recommend mailing it right away so the event doesn’t close before your payment arrives.

One last thing: Just like the last few years, we’re opening up sponsorship opportunities for the event. There are $500 and $1,000 sponsorship levels. At the $500 and $1,000 levels, you will get mentions in all event-related email plus a signed Bound Edition (year of your choice); at the $1,000 level you will also get mentions in Twitter blasts and in the 2018 Bound Edition.

As with 100 percent of the auction and raffle proceeds, 100 percent of all sponsorship contributions will go to the hurricane relief effort.

If you or your business might be interested, give me a shout.

Let me know if you have questions. And let’s raise a lot for the people of Puerto Rico, land of Pudge Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, Ruben Sierra, Alex Claudio, Hector Ortiz, and so many others who have been a huge part of this franchise.

In this week’s episode of “This Is Us,” an oddly cameoing Sylvester Stallone says, at one point in the story:

“In my experience, there’s no such thing as ‘a long time ago.’ There’s only memories that mean something, and memories that don’t.”

Seven years ago today, this happened.

It’s one of my three or four favorite Texas Rangers memories.

Still.

Probably forever.

I’ve written about it many times, the first of which was this time.

According to Sly, that wasn’t a long time ago, because there’s no such thing.

It was just seven October 12’s ago, a memory that means something, a lot, and always will, no matter what’s ahead for this franchise, especially on those future October 12’s when this club is still playing baseball, not to mention the two or three October weeks each year that follow.

Two years ago today, the Rangers went up to Toronto and, though outhit by the Blue Jays, capitalized often and put five runs on David Price’s ledger, winning their ALDS opener, 5–3.

A year ago today, I wrote about Texas dropping its second straight ALDS game at home in a Best-of-Five against those same Blue Jays, in starts by Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish, on the heels of leading the league in regular season wins.

Both were better than writing, three years ago today, about Baseball America’s High A Carolina League prospect rankings, or about writing today about what I wrote about one and two and three years ago.

Crushing playoff losses are better than 162 without the +.

That 2014 entry was at the beginning of a book, rather than toward the end, and that’s where this one lands as well.

I was just editing the book whose daily entries are now done, and I was working on the late July section, when Yu Darvish was possibly going to be traded, then was, and when Adrian Beltre was zeroing in on nailing down history, and did.

Today, Darvish is slated to start the Dodgers’ next game, looking to help them sweep Arizona in the NLDS. It will be his third playoff appearance — and his first since the one I wrote about a year ago today.

Today, Beltre is watching playoff baseball and maybe a little NFL football, with the rest of us.

Seven years ago today, the Rangers spent an off-day at home, having gone up two games to none in St. Petersburg in their first playoff series in 11 years.

Six years ago today, C.J. Wilson and four Rangers relievers beat Justin Verlander’s Tigers in Game One of the ALCS, 3–2.

Those were really good October 8’s.

As was the one when Texas found itself shockingly down a pair of ALDS games to Toronto, a year ago, all things considered.

I’d rather be thinking about how steep a hill it was, going on the road and needing two wins to extend the series and the season, than about how quietly exciting this organization’s growing stable of center fielders and catchers is, especially in the lower half of the system.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m fired up about that.

But it’s not playoff baseball, and I’m already imagining next October 8, which should stage the third or fourth game of the ALDS, and hopefully a Rangers season that hasn’t yet ended.

And the back of a book, rather than the start.

So this is the last song

In a series

Titled “How you broke my heart.”

* * *

In college I lived, one year, in a part of Austin that was largely residential. Old neighborhoods in every direction.

But on the way to the lake there was a municipal golf course. And skirting the corner of the grounds, right where the front nine met the back, was a baseball diamond. I think there are two there now. There was one then.

I used to stop during my jog at the diamond. Because I hated jogging. And because there was almost always a ballgame going on there. Between teams I’d never heard of, and players I didn’t know.

I stopped because it was baseball and not exams and not financial aid statements and not relationship blunders and not law school applications and not rent payments and because it was a whole lot better than jogging.

The players on that field were young, maybe in junior high, and sometimes you’d hear a dad bark or a mom yell or a coach holler, but my memory is that the players seemed oblivious, almost dismissive. It was their game. They were competing and they were making plays and they were not making plays and the baseball game belonged to them.

The Great Game. The game where failure is the baseline.

I’m sure that mom over there and the dad 20 feet away were stressed out about plenty of things. Things more critical than final exams or a fourth of the rent check. The kids probably had their own worries weighing on them, too, but maybe the ballgame was a break from all of that, as it should be.

As long as Mom and Dad accepted the failures. Let their kids experience them, work through them. Decided it would be OK for there to be things their kids were better at than they were — and other things their kids didn’t do as well. That should be OK, too.

A few blocks from 3204 Bonnie Road, there was a mound at the center of a grass infield in the middle of a youth baseball field off to the side of a golf course a mile from the lake.

It was baseball, familiar and anonymous. And that was always enough.

* * *

Sometimes things hit you just right.

A hit-and-run single the opposite way.

Queso and a very cold drink.

A line drive barreled 250 feet toward you, with a perfect long hop and the runner turning third base with intent.

A song that clobbers you at the right exact damn time.

Your kid stretching her limits.

And sometimes they don’t.

Without one, however, especially in sports, the other loses its punch.

* * *

I’ve been in Surprise, Arizona, locked in on a television set along with a handful of Rangers folks, when the big club clinched a division title (at Oakland, 2016).

I’ve been there, watching the same set with many of those same people, as Texas suffered possibly its worst regular season loss ever (at Oakland, 2012).

This year, I was in Surprise when Texas was finished, with games left on the schedule.

Finished, in part, because of what had just happened in Oakland.

Each, a season of heartbreak. From 2012 to 2016, from 95 losses to one strike away, they all break your heart, unless . . . .

One day.

I don’t remember when in 2009 I was at Fall Instructs or whether that visit coincided with the Rangers’ mathematical elimination on September 29. I do remember my first look at 16-year-old Jurickson Profar on that trip, and the feeling that the big club, about to finish with a winning record for the first time in five years, was on the verge of something really good, and I’ll fully admit that my vision of how those two story arcs would play out converged like your favorite story line in “Lost,” or [insert some other 2009 reference; I got nothing].

The Rangers’ first-ever pennant, of course, arrived a lot sooner than I imagined.

Profar’s rise to prominence, if not preeminence . . . didn’t.

I mention 2009 because — aside from the brutal 2014 season, a horror show on the field and off — that was the last year the Rangers were eliminated before the final baseball game they played.

Feels, sometimes, like we take that for granted.

There’s not a major pro sport whose playoff invitations are more exclusive. And only once in these last eight seasons did the Rangers play so much as one baseball game that, in terms of playoff eligibility, didn’t matter.

That is, until Tuesday the 26th, when a Minnesota victory made Texas’s fifth straight loss, hours later, statistically meaningless. It was made meaningless because the first three of those five in a row came in Oakland, four weeks after another three in Oakland were won by the A’s, who would finish last in the division for the third straight season.

Houston 14, Texas 3 on Tuesday the 26th was made meaningless because the Rangers lost eight consecutive games in Oakland in 2017.

Or, maybe, because the bullpen blew 21 saves, so many of which came before school let out in the spring.

Or because the offense hit .224 on the road, the lowest average any team has had away from home in the 45 years since MLB introduced the designated hitter.

Or because they played a third of the year without their best player and a third of the year without their best pitcher and nearly that much without their second best pitcher.

Or because the hitters struck out too much and the pitchers didn’t strike out enough and the outfield defense was challenging but not as challenging as the year the second baseman had.

This club has never been about one or two star players (unlike the Angels, whose superstar has won as many as playoff games in his seven years as you have), but it’s telling perhaps that, in a poll of 45 players, club executives, scouts, media, and analysts, Yahoo’s Jeff Passan compiled an All-MLB Team, Second Team, and Third Team last week, comprised of 61 players, with only Texas, Kansas City, and Tampa Bay unrepresented by either a current player or one that it traded during the season.

There were plenty of Rangers who didn’t underachieve this year, but not enough. Coming off an AL-best 95 wins, this team should not have finished with a losing record.

Or with a season-ending set of four, at home against those blasted A’s, that didn’t matter.

A season-ending set of four that began with a loss, on the day that ground was broken hundreds of feet away.

And that ended with a loss — like every Rangers season, 162+ or otherwise, for 13 years in a row.

Sometimes the heartbreak fades just after the memory goes. Other times it persists, indifferent to attempts to overcome with anything other than that which was narrowly missed.

* * *

The Rangers lineup that got ready to play on Monday the 25th in Goodyear, Arizona, 20 miles south of Surprise, wasn’t focused on the big club’s dwindling chances. Blaine Prescott and Charles Leblanc and Pedro Gonzalez and Sam Huff and Brendon Davis and Curtis Terry and Darius Day and David Garcia and Myles McKisic, none of whom is likely to reach Arlington before Globe Life Field opens, were instead locked in on that afternoon’s opposing pitcher.

Hunter Greene piled up more millions to sign (7.23) than pro innings pitched (4.1) this summer, but by all accounts (not that it was hard to tell) the Rangers’ hitters weren’t clenching up as they got set to take on the Cincinnati 18-year-old in what would be his first Instructional League outing, and that 99–101 with a hammer breaking ball.

Play ball.

Double rocketed down the third base line.

6–3 groundout.

Opposite-field triple (by Gonzalez, the return from Colorado for Jonathan Lucroy and in the estimation of some the MVP of Rangers camp so far).

Walk.

Strikeout.

Double blasted into the left field corner.

The parlance in exhibition games when the teams agree to end an inning short of three outs is that the inning is “rolled.”

Once Curtis Terry pulled into second with his two-run two-bagger, he and nine Reds players headed toward their dugouts. The Rangers’ first inning against Hunter Greene (which you can watch in its entirety here) was rolled.

Second inning:

Walk.

Line drive missile off Greene’s glove.

Line drive missile off Greene’s foot.

Opposite field single.

Four-hundred-foot sacrifice fly to center.

Run-scoring single to left.

Inning: rolled.

It was the second of nine innings, on the 14th day out of 26, for the 59 players invited to Instructs by the Rangers, effectively extending their season from six months to seven. They came from the 1st round and the 35th. From the draft and from the Dodgers. From high schools in New Jersey and from community colleges in Utah and from Venezuela and Nicaragua and Cuba.

The days drag but the years fly by, said one of the coordinators while I was there. He wasn’t talking about the baseball season, but in the context of one that fell well short for the franchise, he could have been.

I figured some of the players might look gassed, just trying to get to the finish line for the year (example: Luis Ortiz, 2014), but I saw none of that. The coaches wake up when some of us go to sleep, and start working. It sets a tone. Expectations are high and accountability is demanded and the work never stops. (At least, formally, until October 7.)

In pitching coordinator Danny Clark’s 12 years with the Rangers, the organization has had 67 pitchers who’d come through its Instructional League program get to the big leagues. DC pointed that out in a room of 30 pitchers — ages 18 to 23, plus James Jones (the only one of the five players in the Leonys Martin trade with Seattle who hasn’t changed teams again), a converted outfielder coming off Tommy John who will turn 30 during the 2018 season — not to pat himself and his staff of instructors on the back, but to challenge the kids in the room with the reality that most of them — do the math — won’t do enough to get to the Major Leagues.

It’s a game of failure. Effort, though it guarantees nothing, is essential.

DC singled out Alex Claudio as an example. A 27th-round pick with middling stuff who changed his arm slot but never his focus, driven to do everything asked of him so he could pitch in the big leagues.

As far as the pitchers in camp are concerned, in my three days there AJ Alexy was drawing a good bit of the buzz . . . but not as much as righthander Hans Crouse, who looks like he should have never fallen to the 66th pick — and the 30th pitcher taken — in June.

The transition of 27-year-old Royce Bolinger from right field/first base to pitcher isn’t official, but it’s 94–95 and it’s repeatable.

If Gonzalez hasn’t been the star of camp, 18-year-old shortstop Chris Seise (rhymes with “beast”) has. He’s not quite Carlos Correa’s size (at a similar age), but he’s close, and coming off a .336/.395/.509 Arizona League run (followed by a late-season stint against college-aged Northwest Leaguers), the 2017 supplemental first-rounder (taken as compensation for the loss of Ian Desmond with the 29th overall pick, the same slot Lewis Brinson was drafted in five years earlier) has the chance to be a system-defining prospect. I won’t say I’m coming away from Surprise with 2009 Profar thoughts in my head, for a couple reasons, but I’m really fired up about Seise, whose bat looks like it might play anywhere on the field.

In contrast to Seise’s pull power, all I saw first-rounder Bubba Thompson do was wear out the opposite field. His approach is a lot more refined than I expected it would be, and his reads and his jumps and his closing speed in the outfield stand out.

Between Thompson, Gonzalez, Leody Taveras, Miguel Aparicio, and Leuri Mejia, the center field depth on display in Surprise was exciting.

And when the six catchers in camp (Garcia, Huff [more than just a bat], Matt Whatley [more than just a glove], Josh Morgan, Melvin Novoa, Yohel Pozo) took the field for their throwing program one morning, one high-ranking scout on hand wasn’t afraid to say he bets all six get to the big leagues. And that doesn’t include Jose Trevino, who is on the doorstep.

It’s going to be a very cool thing when the organization produces a long-term starter behind the plate and another one roaming center field.

Gonzalez (19 years old) and Davis (20) and Alexy (19) had the distinction not only of being the three players in camp who started the year in different organizations, but also in competing for the 1st Annual Alex Rios Calf-a-Like title. They’re gonna get bigger and stronger now that they’re here.

(Yanio Perez, on the other hand, throws down more of a Juan Uribe/Pablo Sandoval vibe.)

Jon Daniels suggested this week that the club’s 2017 draft may turn out to be the strongest of the dozen his group has presided over, interesting given that Texas wasn’t on the clock until the 26th overall pick and was slotted 29th or 30th in every round after the first. Thompson, Seise, Crouse, and Whatley in the first three rounds was a haul, and there was a heavy infusion of pitching after that.

If you don’t recognize a bunch of the names now, just hang tight. In 2013, for example, 21 of the players Texas sent to Instructs — most of whom hadn’t yet graduated from Class A — have since made it to the big leagues.

Twelve made it here. Here are eleven of them: Joey Gallo, Nomar Mazara, Keone Kela, Ryan Rua, Drew Robinson, Chi Chi Gonzalez, Jose Leclerc, Brett Nicholas, Hanser Alberto, Nick Gardewine, and Andrew Faulkner.

Another eight made it somewhere else, after being traded for big leaguers: Lewis Brinson, Nick Williams, Jorge Alfaro, Alec Asher, Luis Sardinas, Tomas Telis, Cody Ege, and Abel De Los Santos.

One other, Odubel Herrera, made it elsewhere as a Rule 5 pick.

Aside from those 21, there are six who aren’t yet Major Leaguers — but were traded for players who were: Marcos Diplan, Ryan Cordell, Travis Demeritte, Akeem Bostick, Eduard Pinto, and Marcus Greene.

And I count another seven, still here, who barring injury should get to the big leagues, led by Ronald Guzman, Jonathan Hernandez, and Joe Palumbo (who returns to the mound in 2018 following Tommy John surgery).

Another player on the 2013 Fall Instructional League roster, Yeyson Yrizarri, was traded this summer for international pool money, which we might look back on as a critical step toward signing Shohei Ohtani, who pitched a two-hit shutout Tuesday night, punching out 10 (and hitting 98 on his 124th and final pitch) while going 1 for 4 out of the cleanup spot in his final appearance this season — and maybe ever — for Nippon Ham.

Maybe Arizona reportedly stepping in and signing Venezuelan outfielder Wilderd Patino, after the Rangers had been rumored months ago to have a $1.3 million agreement with the 16-year-old, is also intertwined with the chase for Ohtani, whose name Jeff Banister included in a sentence Wednesday that included Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods.

The player I left off that first list, the rundown of the 12 players who reported to Instructs in 2013 and have since become Major Leaguers, is Rougned Odor. He was 19 years old.

Odor had a strong 2013 season (.305/.365/.474, mostly with High A Myrtle Beach, plus a month with AA Frisco to end the year) and a very good camp afterwards. Widely considered the number one prospect in the organization, Odor was assigned to Frisco when the 2014 season began.

A month later, he was in Texas, replacing the Donnie Murphy-Josh Wilson duo that was replacing the injured Profar, who was replacing the traded Ian Kinsler.

At age 20, Odor (.259/.297/.402) more than held his own against big league pitching. He struck out 71 times in 114 games (417 plate appearances).

Extrapolate those 71 strikeouts over 162 games, and the total would have been 101.

Extrapolate to the 651 plate appearances Odor amassed this year, and the strikeout number would have been 111.

Odor fanned 162 times this season. A clean one per game.

He improved his OPS from 2014 to 2015. And from 2015 to 2016.

In 2017, he did not. Odor hit .204/.252/.397, inferior in each column to those rookie numbers three years ago.

In terms of offensive Wins Above Replacement, he has gone from being a 1.2-win hitter to 2.7 to 3.3 . . . to -0.5.

Correct: In spite of his 30 home runs, the metrics say Rougned Odor was worse than a replacement-level hitter in 2017.

That has to change. There’s hope that his issues on defense start to iron out with experience, even marginally.

But as a hitter, it starts with approach.

For Odor, 2016 was The Punch. 2017 was the punchout.

There was plenty in 2017 to celebrate. Gallo’s arrival. Adrian’s transcendence. Elvis’s evolution. Delino’s reemergence. Claudio’s toughness.

The outlook for 2018 seems dependent, largely, on two things:

Rebuilding the pitching staff.

And rebuilding Rougie.

* * *

The effort to put a rotation together around Cole Hamels and Martin Perez, and a bullpen in need of a lot, can’t all come via free agency. It will likely cost Texas some of its minor league talent, adding names to that Diplan-Cordell list. Nobody appears to be on the verge of breaking through from the farm system to join the rotation, at least not to start the season.

As for the bullpen, spending big on late relief is usually not something Jon Daniels likes to do.

There’s been tons of attention and praise heaped lately on the Cleveland pitching staff, and deservedly so. Notably, there isn’t a single free agent acquisition among the 11 arms the Indians will go to battle with against the Yankees this week.

They traded for Corey Kluber when he was in AA, in a three-team deadline deal involving Jake Westbrook.

They traded for Carlos Carrasco (AAA) in a six-player deadline deal involving Cliff Lee.

They traded for Trevor Bauer (four games of big league experience) in a three-team, nine-player player deal involving Shin-Soo Choo.

Cleveland also got Bryan Shaw in that deal.

The Indians traded four prospects for Andrew Miller, and two prospects for Joe Smith.

They traded for Mike Clevinger (High A) by shipping Vinnie Pestano away.

They signed Danny Salazar out of the Dominican Republic for a modest $210,000.

They drafted Josh Tomlin in the 19th round, and Cody Allen in the 23rd round.

They claimed Tyler Olson off waivers.

Daniels acknowledged at his season-ending presser that his group needs to basically remake half a pitching staff, with only two starters (Hamels and Perez) and four relievers (presumably Claudio, Keone Kela, Jake Diekman, and Matt Bush) locked in as established, frontline pieces. In what he described as a “demand-heavy, supply-poor market,” Daniels said acquiring pitching will be a significant challenge but will nonetheless be where the club is most active — and necessarily most creative — this winter.

Whether that includes winning the 30-team chase for Ohtani, or engaging Tampa Bay on Chris Archer, or exploring a reunion with Yu Darvish or an extended relationship with Andrew Cashner, or looking to add a veteran closer (or stepping out on a swing-and-miss set-up man like Anthony Swarzak), or giving Bush a look in the rotation (something he wants, an important factor in Daniels’s mind), all of it’s too soon to say.

But as Texas has shown regularly, and Cleveland is showing right now, there are different ways to get where the Rangers need to get on the mound.

* * *

Is it an indictment on Darvish’s value (not his ability, but his value) or a testament to the battle in this team that, leading up to the trade with the Dodgers, Texas had a win percentage of .481, and after the trade, it was .483 — with Texas gaining Willie Calhoun, Alexy, and Davis as part of the shakeout?

I’d take him back. The money’s got to be right — and it probably won’t be — but I’d take him back.

* * *

My afternoon drive most days takes me by several elementary schools, a couple of which have baseball diamonds skirting the corner of the grounds. Nine months out of the year there are practices or games going on, with kids learning the game on scrubby patterns of dirt and weeds and the occasional patch of healthy grass, fringed by a rickety backstop battling scoliosis and a couple makeshift bleachers of three rows each.

I’ve never pulled over to watch. Maybe if I made time these days to jog, and didn’t hate jogging even more, and didn’t have far more to worry about than college exams and pulling together my fraction of the rent, I would. But in that handful of seconds each day that I peripherally catch the game being played, by kids, I’m good.

There are probably games and workouts just like it, on haggard fields in Colombia and Curacao, 12 months a year.

It’s the Great Game, and not just because it challenges you physically and mentally and emotionally and not just because it demands accountability and discipline, and teaches you, at a young age and in a productive setting, how to respond to opportunity and adversity, and to failure.

It’s the Great Game, because you can be Aaron Judge or you can be Alex Claudio, and thrive.

But emerge from those Little League fields, and then from high school or college, and then from the minor leagues and Fall Instructs, and get to the Major Leagues, and there will still be failure.

And heartbreak.

Sometimes the heartbreak happens in one defensive inning.

Sometimes over four days, in two countries.

Sometimes on a fly ball to right.

But sometimes it lasts months, a half-year quicksand struggle with the rope, ultimately, slipping away, while others march on.

I’ll miss 2017. I’ll miss Elvis and Joey and Adrian and Alex and I’ll miss Eric & Hicksie & Jared and I’ll miss Levi’s gamers.

But they’ll all be back.

They’ll all be back, along with the game, promising nothing ever but an outside shot at winning your final game of the year, not the 162nd one that doesn’t matter, but the one topping off that elusive 162+ phase that has been less elusive for the Texas Rangers the last eight seasons than just about anyone else.

Promising nothing, that is, unless you count a routinely broken heart, dodged only, if ever, by putting in the work, over days that often drag and years that always fly by, that just might lead, once and for all, to the win that ends not just your season, but everyone else’s, too.

The season ends in a couple days.

Practically speaking, it was over a couple weeks ago.

Mathematically, however, the Rangers were done, once and for all, on Tuesday.

I was in Arizona when that happened, taking in three days of Fall Instructs.

I have a lot to say about that. And about the big club. But it might take a little while, as the season requiem for me typically does.

Appreciate your patience.

Globe Life Field.

Life.

In this July 16 entry, we talked about the four categories that MLB’s 30 clubs occupy with regard to spending limits on the J2 class (that is, international free agents younger than 25) for the 12-month period that opened on July 2, 2017.

Generally speaking, these are the groups:

Clubs that exceeded international spending cap in 2015–16 or 2016–17:

Braves, Cubs, White Sox, Reds, Astros, Royals, Dodgers, A’s, Cardinals, Padres, Giants, Nationals

• Forfeits signing bonus pool for 2017–18 J2 class
• May sign international free agent but limited to $300,000 per player

Small-market clubs with lowest revenue/winning percentage value who are not barred:

Diamondbacks, Orioles, Indians, Rockies, Pirates

• Signing bonus pool for 2017–18 J2 class is $5.75 million
• Permitted to trade for added pool space (an extra 75 percent of pool) to reach maximum of $10,062,500

Small-market clubs with not-quite-as-low revenue/winning percentage value who are not barred:

Marlins, Brewers, Twins, Rays

• Signing bonus pool for 2017–18 J2 class is $5.25 million
• Permitted to trade for added pool space (an extra 75 percent of pool) to reach maximum of $9,187,500

All other clubs:

Rangers, Red Sox, Tigers, Angels, Mets, Yankees, Phillies, Mariners, Blue Jays

• Signing bonus pool for 2017–18 J2 class is $4.75 million
• Permitted to trade for added pool space (an extra 75 percent of pool) to reach maximum of $8,312,500

Also in that July 16 report (whose article ID is divisible by 11), I ran down some of the big expenditures that clubs like Boston, Tampa Bay, Minnesota, and a handful of others had already made signing current J2’s, drawing down whatever their bonus pool was. There isn’t a resource (as far as I’m aware of, at least) that tracks J2 signings, so we’re left to pick up on reports here and there regarding players agreeing to terms.

There’s also no resource I know of that keeps official tabs on how much added pool space clubs have traded for.

We do know that the Rangers traded Class A shortstop Yeyson Yrizarri to the White Sox in July for an undisclosed amount of Chicago’s pool allotment — note above that the Sox can’t spend this summer anyway, so it was an asset of little use to them other than to flip for prospects — and that in August the Rangers acquired $500,000 in pool space from Baltimore (who could spend internationally . . . but almost never do) for Class A second baseman Brallan Perez.

We don’t know how much Texas got from the White Sox, though, or whether there have been other Rangers trades for pool space, or where between $4.75 million and $8.3125 million their bonus pool sits as a result.

We also don’t know how much more than $4.5 million the Rangers have already spent on J2 players these last two-and-a-half months, and without knowing how big they’ve built their pool or how much they’ve drawn it down, we don’t know what’s left to allocate, for instance, toward righthander Shohei Otani when Nippon Ham (very likely) posts him this off-season.

But Ronald Blum (AP) and Jesse Sanchez (MLB.com) evidently do.

Blum reported last week that, “[a]s of now, the most Otani could get this offseason would be a $3,535,000 signing bonus from Texas or $3.25 million from the Yankees.”

Sanchez agrees.

OK then.

That number presumes that the Rangers have boosted their pool to that $8,312,500 limit or very close to it (if, based on Baseball America and other sources, they’ve indeed spent more than $4.5 million on 2017–18 J2 players, and have $3,535,000 left, as Blum reports).

Two notable things about the Blum story:

1. It’s very interesting that Blum has the data on pool space trades and J2 expenditures — or access to the pool space “balance” each club has at this point. He’s either got everyone’s J2 balance, or all the variables to do the math himself, in order to determine not only what Texas has left to spend, but also that it’s more than any other club has.
2. It’s not really important, as far as Otani is concerned.

A few hundred thousand dollars here and there are not going to matter to Otani. If money were a factor, he’d spend another two seasons in Japan and then, at age 25, be eligible for a nine-figure MLB bidding war (especially since MLB has already made it clear that it won’t sign off on a discreet agreement by his signing club to give Otani a massive extension after his rights have been acquired). He’s not going to choose his organization based on whether they can pay him a signing bonus of $3.5 million or $1.5 million.

It’s going to be more important that he’d have an opportunity to hit (presumably giving American League teams an edge, as he could conceivably DH two or three times between starts on the mound) and that he feels comfortable with the team and the environment, and maybe the franchise who brought Otani’s hero stateside nearly six years ago and suited him up in the 11 that he’d worn for the Fighters and that Otani wears now scores well there, whether or not it has the most J2 money to spend.

The Dodgers are in Philadelphia right now. A Rangers fan who lives there ran into Yu Darvish yesterday. He was wearing a Rangers cap.

(The fan. Not Darvish.)

And when Darvish saw the Rangers fan in the Rangers cap, he apparently said: “Texas!”

(Darvish. Not the fan.)

Incidentally, I don’t follow that Rangers fan on Twitter.

I saw his tweet because Yu Darvish retweeted it.

Interesting.

Darvish wears 21 for the Dodgers, because Logan Forsythe wears 11.

I don’t know if he misses number 11, or if he misses Texas, or if any of that matters since he’s going to get paid an insane amount this winter (in a free agent market that features Jake Arrieta and not much else in terms of front-of-rotation types), his current scuffles notwithstanding, and since his return could be cost-prohibitive, given how much else the Rangers need to do this winter.

Speaking of which, I might write something soon about Rays ace Chris Archer, whose Tampa Bay jersey has a 22 on the back and likely will for four more years, save for the likelihood that he’s not going to be in Tampa Bay for four more years.

But we’ll talk about 22 another time.

For the moment, I just wanted to talk a little bit about two 11’s.

They’d won four of five, five of seven, seven of 10, and many of them handily — they’d needed only one save in those seven wins, and that was in a game they led by four going into the ninth.

They’d lost just one series out of their previous 10, dating all the way back to July 31-August 2.

They looked primed to win a 10th of 11, having responded to an early 4–0 deficit against the Yankees last Friday by scoring 11 of that game’s remaining 12 runs.

That 11–5 win over New York culminated a week of baseball in which the Rangers hit .303 (1.021 OPS), hit the ball out of the park 15 times, and scored eight runs per game. They held their opponents to a .282 average (.772 OPS), and went 5–2.

They were playing contending baseball. An inconsistent season had them two teams and 2.5 games short of a playoff spot, but with 22 games to go, a seventh year of 162+ out of eight seemed in reach.

Since then: A .201 batting average in six games (.589 OPS) and 3.5 runs per game. Opponents at .308 (.940 OPS) and scoring 8.3. One win in that stretch.

Last year’s Rangers club led the American League in wins and yet had a lesser run differential (+8) than this year’s club (+19), which has hovered around the .500 mark forever. (The last time the record was more than two games above or below even was a month and a day ago.)

Make of that what you will, but you don’t have to limit your view to a sabermetric one to see that some of the key components of this team are flawed.

They miss too many pitches.

But not enough bats.

They don’t throw well from the outfield, and the routes aren’t always clean.

Some of the latter is experience — and maybe a reminder that in ways this team is too young.

And too old.

Second base.

Their closer played his way into a dump deal.

Their free agent-year catcher fell off a production cliff and played his way into a dump deal, too.

(Not that Pedro Gonzalez doesn’t have a chance; but compared to what Texas gave up for the catcher . . . . )

They collide on infield pop-ups and lose a combined 24 games from one of their most important bats and one of their most important relievers as a result.

Their failure to put hitters away and failure to avoid the center-cut offering and failure to take care of the baseball leads, seemingly, to an inning every night in which the other guys bat around.

Not every night.

But it feels like it.

Twenty blown saves (19 of which, it feels like, came in April).

They traded their most dangerous starting pitcher and they played without their heart and soul for close to half the year (his return to action the last two nights was an act of urgency, not desperation, and I’ll take a guy every single day who leaves it all out there for his teammates) and their closer throws as hard as I did and seven of their 12 leaders in relief appearances have been Jose Leclerc, Jeremy Jeffress, Dario Alvarez, Jason Grilli, Austin Bibens-Dirkx, Ricky Rodriguez, and Nick Gardewine, all of which, if you were told in March would be the case . . . .

Well, you wouldn’t expect this team would have been in it with three weeks to go.

They’ve been valiant, resilient, tenacious, stubborn. Entertaining.

But the sun eventually sets. Batteries lose their charge. The song always ends, and there’s not an encore every time.

It’s looking bleak for 2017, making Texas one of half the league’s 2016 playoff teams that in all likelihood won’t return this year.

The Rangers’ thinning chances are better than the other four clubs (Blue Jays, Orioles, Giants, Mets) who played 162+ last year but won’t again, and anytime we get to be locked in after the NFL has kicked its season off beats what’s behind Door â„-2.

Still, 29 big league seasons end in disappointment at some level every year, and I’d rather have the crushing disappointment of a playoff sweep than no invitation to that party, the one that Texas has been a guest at almost every year for the better part of a decade.

Maybe last year’s club, a Pythagorean anomaly, overachieved. This year’s?

Didn’t.

The Rangers haven’t just been losing lately. They’ve been getting smoked.

Kyle Seager, the last four nights (if not the last seven years), has been a human reminder that baseball can kick you in the junk.

And then follow that up by kicking you in the junk.

Rougned Odor, those same four nights, has reminded us a few times, at the plate and in the field, that it’s still in there, even if his 2017 has been a kick in the junk.

But ours hasn’t. At least I don’t think it has. Floating around .500 all year certainly isn’t the ideal, but I’d rather be playing games that matter in September than go through what Texas went through in 2014 — or what San Francisco is going through this year.

Plus: Elvis Andrus and Alex Claudio and Joey Gallo and Delino DeShields and Robinson Chirinos and Willie Calhoun.

We feel a whole lot better about every one of those guys than we did in March.

But a whole lot worse about the season.

That’s sports.

Different levels of disappointment, for almost everyone, almost every year.

I didn’t expect, as late as a week ago, that this particular level was going to set in this soon.

The Rangers still fight, and that’s awesome and one of the things I love about caring so much about this team. They still fight, because that’s what they do.

That’s what they’ve done in the Michael Young and Adrian Beltre years.

The Wash and Banny years.

The JD years.

They still fight.

But this year’s song is ending.

It was 23 years ago today when I started a job that didn’t involve ringing up groceries or tutoring math or official scorekeeping or resident-assisting or courthouse-running or laying out print ads or stuffing record albums.

It was 23 years ago, September 12, 1994, when I walked into an office for the first time as a full-time lawyer.

I’ve practiced law for nearly half my life. That’s weird.

(Not as weird as some of the ads I had to crop for the Dallas Observer.)

(But still weird.)

On September 12, 1994, there was no baseball. A month earlier, Texas — which had never earned a playoff game in its 22 years — had finished its inaugural season in Globe Life Park (then The Ballpark in Arlington) in first place in the AL West.

With a 52–62 record.

A record that was worse than every team’s in the AL East and worse than every team’s in the AL Central, other than the last-place Twins, who shared the Rangers’ mark.

That’s the win-loss record Texas would finish with, due to the Players Association going on strike, and the franchise’s playoff-less streak would persist.

After seven years in Austin, I was back in Dallas, gainfully employed, and Rangers baseball started to get a lot more interesting.

The strike ended a month into 1995, and the Rangers were finally post-season participants in three of the next four seasons, after which Alex Rodriguez was a Texas Ranger in three of the following four seasons, a couple years after which Jon Daniels was handed the keys, the decade-plus following which has featured two World Series and more 162+ seasons than not, and here we are, with another Rangers season we will never forget.

Because Yu was traded and because Adrian not only hit safely for the 3,000th time but also was putting together his second-best offensive season ever and because Joey arrived and because Elvis arrived and because Jake Diekman is a human beast and because, in spite of Adrian missing half the year and Yu being traded and a thousand bullpen meltdowns early and meaningful disabled list time for every starting pitcher and nearly every starting position player, the Rangers are more competitive with three weeks to go than they were in almost every one of those first 22 years that I wasn’t lawyering.

Adrian is out and Carlos is out and Nomar is banged up and Rougie is banged up and now Joey may be banged up and the fact that Nap didn’t start against a lefty last night suggests he might be, too, and all those injuries impact every corner spot on the field plus DH, at least indirectly, and it’s presumably for that reason that Willie Calhoun tweeted this late last night, not long after Napoli wasn’t well enough to participate in Texas 5, Seattle 3 and Joey tweaked his glove wrist in the final inning of the game.

It had looked fairly certain that Calhoun wasn’t going to debut this month, strictly for procedural reasons, but injuries change plans, and there’s a playoff spot (now just two teams and two games out of reach) to chase.

The left-handed-hitting Calhoun, who is now a left fielder (asked about criticisms of his defense, he responds: “I play three-hole”), may not play tonight, as Texas faces another lefty before finishing the Mariners series against a pair of righthanders, but I wouldn’t rule anything out. Calhoun (who hit .300/.355/.572 against AAA pitching this year, though four years young for the Pacific Coast League at age 22, with 31 homers, 42 walks, and more extra-base hits [64] than strikeouts [61] in 534 plate appearances) is here to play, or he wouldn’t be here until 2018.

Calhoun was born on November 4, 1994, which was right around the day Bar Exam results were released and didn’t end my law career 53 days in.

Today my law career turns 23, and from now on, the anniversary of my work career, at least at the level I had to prepare years for (not that stuffing record albums didn’t take a little training), will also be the anniversary of Willie Calhoun’s, at least at the level he prepared for and dreamed about for well more than half his life.

And if he helps his new teammates, who are within two games of a playoff spot, win a couple games down the stretch with his bat, the events of September 12 may turn out to be more than just a footnote in the story of why this season, like so many lately, might well be one we’ll never forget.

It doesn’t get just a whole lot better than going to a ballgame with your kid, or your friends, or your kid and his friends.

The perfect green and the earthy brown and the blinding white.

The precision chalking of the batter’s box.

The smell of garlic and funnel cakes, delivering that calorie-less payoff if you can manage to be within 10 feet.

And you’re always within 10 feet.

Chuck Morgan’s voice and slash lines on the video board and 38,000-plus.

September’s lenient sun, and a sporadic breeze that rewards you even further, like a 5–4–3 double play off the bat of the other team’s MVP candidate in the ninth inning of a tie game . . . .

Yeah. About that.

There were too many fans in the building standing up to cheer on the game’s final out, drowning out those who were nervously hoping instead to stave it off, and minutes before that there were too many fans applauding Tim Timmons’s botched call on a 3–1 pitch that forced in a run, and minutes before that there was a second baseman who botched what should have been a 5–4–3 double play off the bat of the other team’s MVP candidate in the ninth inning of a tie game, after which the other guys scored two of their three runs, a day after the other guys had scored four of their five runs after the second baseman botched what should have been a 4–6–3 double play.

But — baseball and fathers & sons and 38,000-plus and garlic.

And a team you care a ton about, and tickets to the game.

It’s a game of failure.

For fans, that means learning to rebound from failure, to wash it off and to look ahead and to rebound.

For a second baseman, it also means figuring out how to adjust, and committing to that, so that failure is a springboard, and not a sentence.

He can look 70 feet to his right for a little inspiration on that.

The final 30 minutes of New York 3, Texas 1 felt a little too much like the late ’90s, with Andrew Cashner in the role of Darren Oliver and Rougned Odor as Kevin Elster and the bullpen looming large (though this is not at all a Mike Henneman situation) and too many fans in the building standing up to cheer on the game’s final out.

But in this one, Luis Severino was far more dominant than Jimmy Key, and truthfully, the fact that Texas led going into the eighth is borderline insane, with huge credit to Cashner for yet another standout effort as he charges toward a free agent market light on starting pitching. I’d love to see him back here in 2018, but if he’s not there’s going to be an extra premium draft pick in the Rangers’ pocket in June, because Cashner, taking advantage of this free agent year by throwing down a big, consistently productive season (unlike Jonathan Lucroy), is going to get a Qualifying Offer from Texas (one year and about $18 million), and turn it down.

It was a game that, all things considered, Texas shouldn’t have had as good a chance to win as it did.

But wins are critical right now — even if not as critical as Game 3 of a best-of-five — and that win was only slightly out of reach.

(Sorry if that makes you think again about a botched 5–4–3.)

It matters to us. Not the way it matters to Cashner or to Odor or to Timmons or to the advance scouts and hitting coaches the last few series who have clearly game-planned an opposite-field approach against Alex Claudio, to force hitters to sit on the change and react to 86 if necessary.

Or to Todd Frazier, who seemed almost as unappreciative of two late hit-by-pitches as Carlos Gomez has been the last couple months, and hopefully those aren’t the last couple months of Gomez’s season.

There are plenty of games that have padded the wrong side of 71–70 this year to groan about, that really stunk, and Saturday afternoon’s fits low on that list, if at all.

Maybe I’d feel different this morning if I wasn’t in the ballpark, experiencing the sounds and the smells and Andrew Cashner and the Rangers’ lone hit almost standing up and 80 degrees at first pitch, with my kid and his buddies.

Makes it a little easier to wash it off, to look ahead, to rebound.

A little.

I miss doubleheaders.

Last night’s brutal second inning notwithstanding, Wednesday was a really good baseball day, and not just because of Elvis Andrus and Will Middlebrooks and a series win at a stage of the playoff chase when nothing less will do.

It was a really good baseball day because my team played two, like it used to — by design, and not due to weather — when I was a kid.

The last time Texas played a doubleheader before yesterday was on Memorial Day four years and four months ago. Our high school senior daughter was playing Nitro volleyball and wasn’t yet a theater kid. Our junior high son was in second grade, with a couple months left of coach pitch before transitioning to the real thing. I wrote about Roger Federer and Yu Darvish and David Foster Wallace the next morning.

It was May 27, 2013, and the Rangers visited Arizona twice. The Diamondbacks — who are currently riding a 13-game win streak, including six over the Dodgers — won two straight that day, 5–3 and 5–4, cutting the Rangers’ division lead from 4.5 games to 3.0 games in a season that eventually had the club playing, and losing, a Game 163 against the Rays to earn the second Wild Card spot.

Game 1 that day wasn’t as close as the score suggests. Tyler Skaggs, who has been largely terrible against the Rangers in eight career starts (6.57 ERA, .815 OPS) dominated that afternoon game, which was his first big league appearance that year. Martin Perez, like Skaggs a second-year rookie, struggled, and Ross Wolf and Joe Ortiz mopped up.

Arizona took a 5–0 lead to the ninth, when second baseman Jurickson Profar (who’d doubled earlier in the game) drove Geovany Soto home with a single. Adrian Beltre singled in David Murphy and Andrus to pull Texas to within two runs. But Arizona closer Heath Bell then punched out Nelson Cruz, the potential lead run, and got Mitch Moreland to ground out, ending the game.

That same day, Myrtle Beach Pelicans second baseman Rougned Odor walked, was hit by two pitches, and went 0 for 1.

He was also picked off first base. Twice.

In the nightcap of the Rangers’ and Diamondbacks’ split doubleheader on May 27, 2013, Arizona jumped out to a 2–0 lead early, but Texas scored the game’s next four runs. Darvish pitched into the eighth, going 7.2 with 14 strikeouts and zero walks.

But before getting that 23rd out, Darvish surrendered a two-run, game-tying Didi Gregorius home run — you might remember that one — and in the ninth, Robbie Ross relieved Jason Frasor with a man on second, intentionally walked Martin Prado (not sure why Ron Washington didn’t have Frasor issue the free pass), and served up a walkoff base hit to Cliff Pennington, whose habit of coming up big late against Texas is getting irritating.

Andrus, who led off both games for the Rangers, ended the day hitting .271/.322/.329. He had nine extra-base hits for the season, none of which were home runs.

This year, on the same date, Andrus was hitting .269/.314/.425, with 17 extra-base hits, six of which left the yard.

Today: .304/.345/.494. With 62 extra-base hits. Including 20 bombs.

Elvis Andrus has gotten better.

A lot better.

Without looking, I’m betting Odor hasn’t had too many games — in High A or AA or AAA or Texas — in which he reached base three times on plate appearances that wouldn’t be logged as at-bats, as he did on May 27, 2013.

He got better.

A lot better.

From 2013 to 2014 to 2015 to 2016.

He hasn’t gotten better this year.

He’s regressed.

A lot.

With his approach at the plate and his reliability in the field and his ability to adjust.

One year after that Class A game between Myrtle Beach and the hated Lynchburg Hillcats, Odor was a Major League ballplayer — and he rewarded the organization’s faith in a big way, hitting (as of that date) .298/.313/.489 (.802 OPS), with as many extra-base hits (5) as strikeouts in 50 plate appearances.

Today, his strikeout rate (137 in 541 trips this season) is nearly three times worse.

Fast-forward to yesterday’s twinbill.

In Game 1, Andrus homered to put Texas on the board in the first. In doing so, he joined Mike Trout and Jose Altuve as baseball’s only 20/20 men in 2017.

Andrus singled in a run with two outs to tie the game in the third.

He grounded out to third in the fifth, because baseball is a game of failure.

He singled with a man on in the sixth.

He doubled in the Rangers’ final run in the eighth.

In the same game, a 12–8 Texas win, Odor struck out swinging after a Mike Napoli walk in the second.

He fouled out to first in the fourth — swinging at the first pitch (a slider middle-in, where Odor is a .093 hitter this year) after a 21-year-old lefty making his big league debut had just walked two Rangers in a row, with Texas down two runs.

He doubled and scored in the fifth, and was hit by a pitch in the seventh.

In the ninth, he struck out swinging after working a 3–1 count.

In Game 2, Andrus singled, walked, stole a base, and scored.

In the third inning, with Texas down, 5–0, Braves ace Julio Teheran got Delino DeShields to ground out. This is the sequence that followed:

Andrus walked.

Nomar Mazara homered.

Carlos Gomez was hit by a pitch.

Joey Gallo walked.

Odor stepped up as the potential tying run, and we all know what he was thinking.

Ball one to Odor.

Ball two to Odor.

Fastball in the zone, but low and away, where Odor is a sub-.200 hitter. A good pitch to lay off of, especially ahead in the count, 2–0.

Odor offered, and grounded into an inning-ending 5–4–3 double play.

Rougned Odor wasn’t trying to do too much as a wide-eyed rookie in 2014.

I’d rather not be thinking about Hank Blalock right now.

Or about how last night goes if Blalock’s fellow Rancho Bernardo High School alum Cole Hamels (31–9, 3.60 as a Ranger but 1–3, 7.23 in nine starts from his final August appearance on in 2016–2017) doesn’t go four-pitch walk, 1–2 hit batsman, 2–0 RBI single, strikeout, run-scoring E-1, RBI single, single, two-run double before recording the second out of the second inning.

I still love doubleheaders.

And I still believe in Rougie.

He’s got a very big off-season ahead of him, mentally.

Elvis had one himself, after Game Five in Toronto in 2015.

It’s probably hyperbolic to suggest that, one season after Andrus’s huge contract extension, his career — solid but in some ways considered lacking — was at a crossroads. But what he has done since then — improving his OPS from .666 (2015) to .801 (2016) to .839 (today), and becoming significantly more reliable defensively — gives me hope that Odor (.665 OPS), who cares a lot, will take from Andrus and Beltre and Tony Beasley and Anthony Iapoce and Jeff Banister what they’re offering and will take a longer look in the mirror than he’s ever taken as a baseball player.

It’s in there, and it can resurface, with a return to what’s adrenalizing and good.

Like a couple big league ballclubs playing two.

Though things don’t always play out as planned, if I can manage it I generally try to get to work on the Bound Edition each year on Labor Day weekend. There’s the Top 72 Prospects list to build up and break down, the Rule 5 conundrum chapter, best minor league tools in the system, and a bunch of other book features (plus the halfcourt shot to land the authors for the two forewords, which I’m thrilled to say I’ve drained).

There’s one prospect feature I’m not about to get to work on just yet, because I’m not real sure yet where his 2017 story ends.

Round Rock’s final action this season will get underway in a couple hours. Its penultimate game started and ended, last night, with Willie Calhoun.

The key piece to the Rangers’ trade of Yu Darvish to the Dodgers, Calhoun played nothing but second base in the Los Angeles system in 2015 and 2016, his first two years of pro ball. This summer, promoted to AAA, he saw action 74 times at second base and, for the first time as a pro, he got some burn in the outfield — a total of 12 times, the first of which wasn’t until the back end of an Oklahoma City doubleheader in June. It wouldn’t be surprising if that experiment was triggered by a conversation or two the Dodgers were beginning to have with other teams, exploring ideas on ways to improve their own club (which, at the time, was tied for second in the NL West, despite having the third-best record in the league). Perhaps another club or two suggested that, yes, they would be interested in Calhoun this summer — but didn’t view the pure hitter as an infielder.

The path to the big leagues in Los Angeles was arguably clearer at second base than on an outfield corner, which is probably why the Dodgers kept Calhoun in the infield as long as they did, just to see if it would come together for the kid. Moving him to the outfield in June, even just part of the time, looks like it might have been to meet another objective, one that eventually presented itself for Los Angeles with the Darvish trade.

On July 31, Los Angeles sent Calhoun — along with righthander A.J. Alexy and infielder Brendon Davis — to Texas for Darvish. The Dodgers had played Calhoun at second base 258 times (270 if you count his 2016 Arizona Fall League stint) and just a dozen times in the outfield, all in his final two months with the organization. The Rangers clearly view Calhoun differently, as he’s played just three times on the dirt in his 28 games with Round Rock, the rest defensively in left field.

Last night’s game began, harmlessly, with Calhoun gathering in a fly ball off the bat of — interestingly — Oklahoma City second baseman-left fielder Tim Locastro, a 2015 (High A Rancho Cucamonga) and 2016 (AA Tulsa and AFL/Glendale) and 2017 (AAA Oklahoma City) teammate of Calhoun’s.

In the fifth inning, after Jurickson Profar singled and stole second, Calhoun blasted a home run — his 30th on the year — to right field, knotting the game at 4–4.

The Dodgers regained the lead over the next two innings, 8–4 — but in the bottom of the seventh, with righthander Walker Buehler (one of baseball’s top prospects, and widely believed to have been untouchable in July trade talks) on the mound, Calhoun followed a pair of walks with a two-run single to center. Oklahoma City 8, Round Rock 6.

The Dodgers plated another run in the eighth, and 26-year-old Cuban righthander Yaisel Sierra — who signed a $30 million deal with Los Angeles last year — kept the Express off the board in the same frame, taking a 9–6 lead to the ninth.

Oklahoma City failed to score in the top of the inning, and Sierra retook the mound to close things out.

Catcher Kevin Torres, on the first pitch he saw, singled to Locastro in left.

Center fielder Jose Cardona fouled a pitch off, then singled to center.

Profar drew a four-pitch walk (he now has 42 AAA bases on balls, and just 32 strikeouts).

Up stepped Calhoun against his former teammate Sierra, whom he’d faced just once before (taking a pitch the other way in an August 11 game, singling to left with two men on).

This time, there were three men on.

Sierra’s first pitch to Calhoun was the final pitch of the game.

It was up and away and Calhoun did what you’re supposed to do with up and away, going with the pitch and hammering it to left center field.

Grand slam. Ballgame. You should watch it.

It was home run number 31 on the year for the 22-year-old (and 93 RBI in just 127 games), improving his Round Rock numbers to .300/.336/.564 over 28 games (eight homers, 26 RBI, no errors, three outfield assists) with today’s season finale remaining. In his 110 plate appearances with the Express, he’s gone down on strikes 11 times.

That’s an insanely low number.

Especially for a power hitter.

And in his seven games (29 plate appearances) against his former club? A slash line of .407/.429/.741 and 11 runs driven in, including Round Rock’s final eight on Sunday.

“It was a really cool feeling to hit it against them,” Calhoun told MiLB.com after the game. “I was with those guys for most of the year and to hit a walk-off against them was an unreal feeling. In the end, it’s all fun and games. Everyone in that clubhouse is my friend and they’re a great bunch of dudes. But I was still really proud to be able to do that against them. I guess I have a little extra chip on my shoulder. You always want to prove that you’re a great player and to show them what they’re missing.”

Which brings me to the buried lede.

After today, will Calhoun get a bigger September opportunity to prove that he’s a great player and show his former organization what they’ll be missing?

For the first month after the Darvish deal, I was pretty certain that Texas wasn’t going to bring Calhoun to the big leagues this year. It’s not because of any sense that he’d be overmatched offensively. It’s because he won’t be Rule 5-eligible this winter, and so he doesn’t need to be added to the 40-man roster this off-season.

Even if Calhoun were a good bet to make the Rangers’ Opening Day roster in April, keeping one extra spot on the roster this winter (which is effectively a 39-man roster until spring training, as Prince Fielder must remain on the off-season roster through 2020 in order for Texas to collect significant insurance proceeds) could be meaningful. While it’s true that there are several players on the roster who will drop off as free agents, and others who will painlessly be let go, there will be plenty additions needed through free agency or trades.

And then there’s the matter of Rule 5.

After the Rangers’ disastrous 2014 season, the club added Jerad Eickhoff, Jorge Alfaro, Luke Jackson, and Hanser Alberto to the 40-man roster in order to protect them from the draft. Texas not only had work to do to build its big league roster back up after a 95-loss season — the club also wanted to keep one more spot clear than it might have otherwise, in order to take advantage of its unusually high Rule 5 position and draft a player in December. The Rangers ended up drafting Delino DeShields.

But they also decided, in rostering Eickhoff, Alfaro, Jackson, and Alberto, to leave players like Jared Hoying, Brett Nicholas, Connor Sadzeck, Will Lamb, and Abel De Los Santos exposed to the draft — as well as Odubel Herrera.

At the time, the decision to leave Herrera off (in favor, by some accounts, of keeping Alberto, the much purer middle infielder) didn’t set off any fan base alarms, but now he’s a .290-hitting everyday center fielder, with an All-Star Game to his credit, in Philadelphia.

This year’s draft-eligible crop includes five players who I’d say are strong considerations for the roster in late November: catcher Jose Trevino, righthanders Jonathan Hernandez and Ariel Jurado, and lefthanders Joe Palumbo and Brett Martin.

It does not include Willie Calhoun. He wouldn’t yet be eligible, based on service time, to be drafted for another year if not on the 40-man roster.

There are others, too, whom the Rangers will at least discuss internally in advance of making November roster decisions. Infielder-catcher Isiah Kiner-Falefa. Righthanders Scott Williams and Sam Wolff and Reid Garrett and Edgar Arredondo and Richelson Pena and lefthander Brady Feigl. Center fielder Jose Cardona, and outfielder-turned-reliever Jairo Beras.

There will be players left off the roster, necessarily, who will be draft considerations elsewhere. And if Calhoun is brought to the big leagues this month, it probably means one extra minor league exposed to the draft — possibly even from the first list above.

That’s the reason — the only reason — that I strongly believed Calhoun would not see Arlington this season.

Until Adrian Beltre got hurt.

Now there are conceivably at-bats available.

And, still, a pennant race.

For what it’s worth, in what might seem like counter-intuitive reasoning, I think if Texas were out of the race, we wouldn’t see Calhoun. If he comes up, it’s because the front office believes he can help the Rangers get to 162+.

Still, though, the club might feel that the outfield and DH, between DeShields and Carlos Gomez and Nomar Mazara and Drew Robinson and Shin-Soo Choo and Mike Napoli, won’t offer enough opportunity to Calhoun this month to justify that winter spot. Ryan Rua and Hoying are candidates to rejoin the club, as is Profar, and at some point you have to ask where the at-bats would come for Calhoun.

Next year, he’ll be here. Maybe in April, maybe not. But he’ll be here at some point in 2018. In the lineup.

The question of whether Calhoun will be here in 2017, of whether he put a bow on an extraordinary season on Sunday night, along with whatever he does this afternoon — as opposed to following all that with a big league debut — is one that has to do almost solely with procedure, and not production.

Willie Calhoun is a very big part of this thing going forward. We may see him in a Rangers uniform any day now — because of the domino effect of the Beltre injury and the Wild Card chase the club remains a factor in — but we may not, and if that’s what happens it’s not because of his defense and not because of his age and not because he’s failed to live up to expectations following the Darvish trade and not because there may actually be someone on the planet unsure of whether the kid can do damage to big league pitching right now.

It would only be because of the way the game’s procedural rules are laid out, and the front office’s attention to detail as it determines whether the benefit of keeping that one extra player shielded from the draft — who could otherwise turn out to be some new team’s Delino DeShields or Odubel Herrera — is risk reduction enough to forgo the opportunity to see how that seriously exciting bat might affect a pennant race this month.

Things don’t always play out as planned. And given the events of the last few days, in St. Petersburg and in Round Rock, I’m no longer even sure what the plans might be.