The Texas Rangers franchise has never won the World Series, but with Nate Eovaldi earning victories in both of his starts, Jonah Heim hitting .450 for the series, Evan Carter batting .357 and José Leclerc saving all four Rangers wins, Strat-O-Matic (@strat-o-matic), the market leader in sports simulation games, has tabbed Texas taking its first title in its simulation of the 2023 World Series, four games to one over Arizona.
In the sim, Eovaldi won games one and five, permitting three earned runs over 11 ⅓ innings in the two contests. After Texas won the opener, 5-3, highlighted by a Marcus Semien home run and four innings of one-hit shutout relief by the bullpen, Arizona battled back to take Game 2, 6-5, on the first of Tommy Pham’s two series homers and a two-run double by the Diamondbacks’ right fielder.
Game 3 went to Texas and Max Scherzer, who allowed one run over 5 ⅓ and again depended on a strong bullpen outing in the 8-3 victory. Corey Seager had a home run and three RBI in the win. Texas took a commanding 3-1 series lead with a narrow 4-3 win in Game 4, surviving a three-run first inning for an early 3-0 deficit and getting 3 ⅔ shutout innings of long relief by Dane Dunning and ending the game when Leclerc induced a double play grounder by pinch hitter Pavin Smith.
With a chance to close out the series in Arizona, Texas turned again to Eovaldi, who allowed five hits and no earned runs over 6 ⅓ innings in the 4-1 win. A three-run second was decisive, with RBI singles by Heim and Josh Jung and a sacrifice fly by Leody Taveras to back Eovaldi and three relievers, culminating in Leclerc’s save, getting two strikeouts and a fly out, all with the tying run at the plate in the ninth.
Pham had two home runs and seven RBI in a losing cause for Arizona, whose starters failed to get out of the fourth inning in the final three games.
In his four saves, Leclerc allowed no runs, three hits and struck out four over 4 ⅔ innings.
Game 1:
Arizona………. 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 – 3 4 0
Texas………… 2 0 0 2 0 0 1 0 – 5 6 0
WP: Eovaldi (1-0); LP: Gallen (0-1); SV: Leclerc (1)
HR: Semien (1)
Game 2:
Arizona……… 3 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 – 6 14 0
Texas……….. 0 0 3 0 0 0 2 0 0 – 5 9 0
WP: Kelly (1-0); LP: Montgomery (0-1); SV: Sewald (1)
HR: Pham (1), Garver (1)
Game 3:
Texas……….. 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 2 2 – 8 10 1
Arizona……… 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 – 3 7 1
WP: Scherzer (1-0); LP: Pfaadt (0-1); SV: Leclerc (2)
HR: Seager (1), Jung (1), Moreno (1), P. Smith (1)
Game 4:
Texas……….. 0 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 – 4 8 0
Arizona……… 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 – 3 5 1
WP: Dunning (1-0); LP: Castro (0-1); SV: Leclerc (3)
HR: Seager (2), Marte (1), Pham (2)
Game 5:
Texas………… 0 3 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 – 4 11 1
Arizona………. 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 – 1 7 0
WP: Eovaldi (2-0); LP: Gallen (0-2); SV: Leclerc (4)
HR: none