The Texas Rangers won Games 3 and 4 of the World Series, but it came with a cost.
During Game 3 at Chase Field, they lost not one, but two important players due to injury: Max Scherzer and Adolis Garcia.
Scherzer had a 3.20 ERA in 45 regular-season innings, and while he wasn’t good in the AL Championship Series against the Houston Astros, he gave the Rangers three scoreless innings in Game 3 of the World Series before going down with back tightness.
Garcia, the ALCS MVP, has eight home runs and 22 RBI in the 2023 playoffs, with a .323 batting average and a 1.108 OPS.
Losing his powerful bat could prove to be a big challenge for the Rangers.
Adolis García and Max Scherzer are no longer on the Rangers #WorldSeries roster.pic.twitter.com/Trt41BKZBp
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) October 31, 2023
As Codify Baseball wrote, both players are now off the World Series roster and now ineligible to play anymore.
Brock Burke replaced Scherzer, and utilityman Ezequiel Duran took Garcia’s place.
While in theory the Rangers will really feel the absence of their two stars, this wasn’t evident in Game 4 because Texas was still able to score 11 runs off the Arizona Diamondbacks bullpen.
Losing Garcia’s incredible production can be problematic, but the Rangers offense is good and deep enough to score enough runs to overcome the situation.
The situation could prove to be a bit worse with Burke, though, because Scherzer seemed to be getting into a groove on Monday before departing.
Burke, on the other hand, allowed three earned runs while getting just one out on Tuesday.
He has ability and talent, but can’t be trusted to the same extent as Scherzer.
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