BY JOSH HAZLETT

Shocked is the only word to describe most baseball fans at the beginning of this World Series as two wild card teams were set to battle it out. The five-seed Texas Rangers faced off with the six-seed Arizona Diamondbacks and the Rangers proved their dominance. 

The Texas Rangers handled the Diamondbacks within five games of their seven-game series. The Rangers secured their first-ever World Series Championship in franchise history to cap off their historic playoff run. 

Performances from players like Zac Gallen, Ketel Marte, Lourdes Gurriell Jr, Corbin Carrol, and Merrill Kelly led Arizona to clinch the NL Pennant. Zac Gallen struggled somewhat in the postseason, but his game-five performance in the World Series gave audiences a better look at the type of dominating stuff he flashed during the regular season. Gallen went six innings only giving up one run with three hits, and he struck out six batters. Ketel Marte led the Diamondbacks with a .329 batting average and with a hit in 20 straight games he set a new record for consecutive postseason games with a hit. 

On the Rangers side of the stat card players like Marcus Semien, Adolis Garcia, Corey Seager, and Nathan Eovaldi stand out. The whole team performed really well the entire playoffs. When you have a player like Adolis Garcia who hit a .323 batting average with eight home runs and 22 runs batted in, or like Corey Seager who had a .318 batting average with 21 hits and a .451 on-base percentage, it is hard for them to go unnoticed. On the pitching side, Nathan Eovaldi went 5-0 in the playoffs with a 2.95 earned run average with 41 strikeouts while only giving up 31 total hits. 

The Rangers beat the Diamondbacks 5-0 on Wednesday, November 1st to cap their World Series victory and they celebrated in the streets of Arlington, Texas last Friday.