The Most Important Series?

Not much for Michael Young and the Rangers to smile about these days

A quick note to you Texas Rangers fans out there: Over the next 4 days while the AL West-leading Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are in town, you will hear a lot of talk from the Texas clubhouse that this series is not that important, that there's still half a season of baseball left, etc, etc. I'm hear to tell you that that is simply not true. This could turn out to be the most important series of the entire season.

Check out the standings right now:

Angels 45-29 --
Texas 38-35 6½

Some simple math shows that a sweep by the Halos puts Texas 10½ games back...even splitting the 4-game series would just keep the Rangers at the same spot they are right now.

If you are a Texas fan, you would really like to see the Rangers take 3 of 4 and at least make up a little bit of ground in the standings. Falling much farther behind this Angels team would make the idea of competing in the West the rest of the way a little bit disheartening.