Rangers in October: Get used to it.

A franchise with a Texas-sized future takes a 1-0 lead in the ALCS.

Jordan Montgomery

Game One of the American League Championship Series was so pure as to be unrecognizable.

Pitchers threw strikes. An umpire called those strikes. Hitters were affirmatively trying to hit. Infielders and outfielders were passionately opposed to the concept of baseballs hitting the turf. Managers tossed aside the idea of the Perfect Matchups and allowed the pitchers to actually execute pitches, not just count them. And, since human beings are still holding the game beyond the reach of the robots, there was the inevitable, game-altering mistake.

The Texas Rangers beat the Houston Astros, 2-0, and took a 1-0 Series lead. The commentators tell us the teams don’t like each other particularly which, if true, makes it even spicier. They also tell us that it will be a long series, which is what they always say. If they said it would be a sweep, we would say why-bother. This one, if it’s anything like Sunday, will be worth the time regardless of the duration.

Lefthander Jordan Montgomery got 19 outs for the Rangers. In what should become a mandatory video seminar for all young pitchers, he used only 90 pitches in doing so, and he only bothered to strike out six. The development of “swing and miss” pitches has become gospel. But Montgomery doesn’t want you to miss. He wants you to hit two-hoppers to shortstop Corey Seager, and he wants to vary his velocity by the increments it takes to make insignificant contact. Once he has shown you everything else, he delivers a high fastball that is faster than advertised, as Houston manager Dusty Baker said.

There are few places where a baseball is safe from the swing of Yordan Alvarez, but Montgomery struck him out three times. Montgomery retired the leadoff man six of seven times. He did it without groans or grunts. In his dugout, pitching coach Mike Maddux must have been glowing. Maddux’s brother Greg pitched the same way, 355 wins worth. Like Montgomery, he made pitching an errand instead of a chore.

Texas was leading 2-0 when Montgomery left. When Rangers’ games go off track, this is usually when. Their bullpen gave up 85 home runs. Only the Angels’ cleanup crew gave up more. The Rangers’ pen also was ninth in bullpen WHIP (walks and hits per inning). But the act of explaining why a bullpen does what it does, especially in postseason, is like trying to install a fitted sheet while drunk. With the help of three-time World Series championship manager Bruce Bochy, the Rangers have figured out a plan, and it only has to work for a month.

The plan also depends on luck. Josh Sborz came in to get the second and third outs in the seventh. He began the eighth by walking Jose Altuve, a no-no. Behind him was Alex Bregman, a fall perennial. Bochy called in Aroldis Chapman, who was one of the pioneers of consistent 100 mph pitching when he was younger. He is also lefthanded, and Bregman is not, which was irrelevant to Bochy.

Bregman took a 2-and-1 slider and walloped it to leftfield. In more serendipitous years, it would have landed in the Crawford Boxes, the seating areas that protrude onto the playing surface, had it hooked just a little bit. Instead, it sailed into the pocket just beside the boxes, where it suddenly requires 366 feet for a home run instead of 325.

Rookie left-fielder Evan Carter was playing his first game in tricky Minute Maid Park. He got over there and made a difficult catch against the wall. Altuve, who has played 840 home games in his Houston career, did not think he could. He was well past second base when Carter made the play, and in his haste to return to first he ran past the bag at second, never touching it. The umpires didn’t see it, but Rangers’ second baseman Marcus Semien did, and Altuve was ruled out on a replay, which ended the inning.

Jose Leclerc, the closer du jour, pitched a 1-2-3 ninth inning and that was it. Thus, the Texas bullpen lowered its playoff ERA to 1.86. It was 4.77 during the grind of 162.

The offense came from Jonah Heim’s first-inning RBI single and Leody Taveras’ fourth-inning home run off Justin Verlander. Taveras’ cousin Willy was Houston’s centerfielder in 2005, when the Astros made their first World Series. At 24, this was his first season of significant play, and he hit 14 home runs with 67 RBI.

This is the Rangers’ third World Series. They were one pitch away from winning in 2011, but David Freese hit that pitch out of the park in St. Louis. They lost to Bochy’s Giants in 2010. As the Dodgers can tell you, no one can chart the flows of October. But the Rangers expect to be in these positions frequently.

They are in a 4-year-old domed stadium that gets the players out of the daily brain fry. They play in the middle of the country, with no coast-to-coast flights. They have no state income tax. They’re owned by energy moguls Ray Davis and Bob Simpson, who aren’t shy about player investment. And, for at least a few years, they have Bochy at the helm.

Two off-seasons ago they signed Seager for 10 years, $325 million, and Semien for seven years, $175 million. That looked like crazy money. Not any longer, not when you calculate how many developmental years it takes to find an All-Star double play combo.

Seager had been an integral Dodger, a former first-round pick and Rookie of the Year, and the World Series MVP in 2020, when the Dodgers won it right there in Arlington. This year he hit .327 with a league-leading 42 doubles, and drove in 96 runs in 119 games. And, yeah, he’s still a functioning shortstop. Letting Seager go didn’t ruin the Dodgers, but it certainly put a dent into their omniscience.

Semien was a defensive disaster at one point. He got better and then got moved to second. More to the point he has missed one game in the past four full seasons, and has driven in 100 or more runs in two of the past three.

The Rangers also bid high to get Jacob deGrom, knowing that they’d spend most of that money on a troubled asset but also knowing that, for one year, he might pitch them to a championship. Then they took on Max Scherzer at the trade deadline. Again, Scherzer hasn’t maintained his health at 38 but he did have an 0.956 WHIP in his eight starts. He might well pitch Game 3 of this series.

So far Davis and Simpson have spent smart money, just like those who are betting on the Rangers to range wherever they want to, for the rest of this decade at least.