TEX 11, ARI 7

Thanks to either a surge of post-Scherzer/Garcia-news adrenaline; Snakes pitchers just being worn out; or both, Texas jumped all over Arizona early. Bochy made some weird choices with the pen and kiiiind of cracked the door for Arizona, but they couldn't come all the way back.

Not the case in the pool! At last, Semien outdid Seager in points (barely; and Seager is now tied for the pool's overall points lead). That means we have a new leader and that Zombie Crase got chased out of the money. Sorry, friend; I thought you had a shot at a payout here.

Here's what we've got after Game 4:

122 YOLO Joe
118 Wonsetler
102 Fell

100 Crase

86 SDB

63 Bingham

58 MArbour
53 Cayenne

38 Tormey

That's probably that as far as the money finishers; Fell could move up if the series goes a full seven -- but I don't think it's going to. I think I'm probably paying people tomorrow morning. There's all sorts of clichés that fly around the various booths at this time of year about how long the season is, it comes down to who's less banged up/gets hot in October, the postseason works differently...all in varying proportions of truth to "gassing on to fill airtime," but time itself doesn't work differently, and the postseason started, functionally, a month ago. That's a long time for an 84-win team with that many young players to not just get hot, but either stay hot or figure out how to grind it out. The Rangers to me seem better built to hang in and make something happen.

I've made predictions like this before -- I said something similar in 2015 when the Mets got out over the canyon and looked down; it happens, kind of a lot -- but I've been wrong before too (also kind of a lot). Eovaldi and Gallen face off tonight at 8:03 ET, and in theory, that's a hard one to call. But in practice, the Diamondbacks look nearly cooked, and I will call it for the Rangers.

We'll see either way, as we always do. Good luck to all and I'll see you back here after Game 5!