BALTIMORE — Bruce Bochy is rolling through another MLB postseason where everything the veteran manager tries seems to work.
Mitch Garver hit a third-inning grand slam in his first appearance of these playoffs, and the American League’s fifth-seeded Texas Rangers won their fourth consecutive game to start the postseason, pushing the top-seeded Baltimore Orioles to the brink of elimination with an 11-8 victory in Game 2 of their AL Division Series on Sunday.
The wild-card Rangers have outscored the Orioles and the Tampa Bay Rays — the AL’s top two teams in the regular season — by a combined score of 25-11. Bochy moved within one win of his first AL Championship Series as a manager; he reached that round four times in the National League, winning three World Series titles with the San Francisco Giants.
“It’s kind of hard to read the emotion on him because sometimes he looks like he’s folded up in a lawn chair sitting there watching the game,” Garver said. “But yes, we trust his decisions and the way he manages the game.”
Gunnar Henderson and Aaron Hicks homered for AL East Division champion Baltimore, which hasn’t been swept in a series of at least two games since May 2022. Now the Orioles are in danger of doing that at a most inopportune time.