First baseman Chris Davis leaps into a waiting throng of Rangers teammates after belting a walk-off home run on Thursday, May 14th.What ensued during Thursday afternoon's two-hour and 10-minute affair at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington was, in many respects, a microcosm of what this team has been about ever since it began to turn the corner during the second-to-last week of April -- remarkable exhibitions of endurance from a previously woebegone starting rotation, nigh-impenetrable defense and opportunely timed offensive eruptions, all of which have coalesced at just the right time to nourish a 10-2 run in the standings that absolutely nobody saw coming three weeks ago.

There are but a handful of things more infuriating to this baseball fan than a masterful performance from a Texas Rangers starting pitcher that, for one reason or another, does not culminate in victory; such wasted efforts typically instill a deep-seated combination of frustration and helplessness, emotions that are intensified by the reality that such strong starting efforts have been in such short supply in recent years. Another source of infuriation? The desperate last-inning gasp for breath that begins with such promise and vigor but then invariably withers away, ultimately leaving us feeling emptier than if the comeback had never even materialized in the first place.

Less than 20 minutes before first baseman Chris Davis addressed each of those problems with a single monstrous swing of the lumber, 23-year-old southpaw Matt Harrison recorded his second 27th out in as many starts and retired to the home dugout, having taken just a momentary fourth-inning misstep that snapped his consecutive scoreless innings streak at 22 and mired the Rangers in a two-run hole that, for five excruciating innings, they proved incapable of digging themselves out of.

His propensity for inducing fly ball outs had not prevented the Rangers' airtight defense from converting 80 percent of the balls put into play against Harrison on this afternoon into outs (thus bolstering a league-leading team defensive efficiency rating which, as Jay Jaffe of Baseball Prospectus points out, has improved by 45 points over the team's 2008 mark and is on pace to rank as the third-biggest single-season defensive turnaround in baseball history), and the seven strikeouts against zero walks were a most welcome bonus, representing his best single-game performance from that perspective since his utterly dominant eight-inning effort against the reigning American League-champion Rays nine months ago in Arlington.

Particularly striking was Harrison's pitch conservation over his final three innings of work, at the outset of which he had already thrown 80 pitches and appeared destined to hurl perhaps two more innings at most; instead, Harrison required just 22 pitches to mow through 10 Mariners -- only one of whom reached base, that being Ichiro -- and afforded an already short-handed Rangers bullpen precious rest going into the biggest series of the young season. I'm not sure the English language contains enough superlatives to describe just how tremendous Harrison has been during this stretch of relative success for Texas, but suffice it to say that the league is beginning to take notice, and if his job security was beginning to wane three weeks ago, that uncertainty has been wholly replaced by a virtual free pass through at least the next two months, if not the entire season.

While some quietly pondered whether the switch has ever flipped so suddenly, so unexpectedly and/or so dramatically for any other Rangers starting pitcher in the last decade, designated hitter Hank Blalock laid the foundation for one of the most memorable ninth-inning comebacks in recent memory by launching a photogenic missile into the upper home run porch in right field, halving Seattle's lead and amassing just his fifth hit in his last 25 at-bats -- four of which have been of the extra-base variety, and three of which have been instrumental in Rangers victories.

I suppose it's all too appropriate that David Murphy and Chris Davis, two players who made significant contributions to last year's squad but evoked repeated calls for early-season demotions on the basis of their ice-cold starts, would administer the lethal injections to both embattled closer Brandon Morrow and the incredulous Mariners with, respectively, a double down the right field line and a series-sweeping blast which none of us are liable to forget any time soon:

[Direct link available here.]

One more win would propel the Rangers to seven games above the .500 threshold, a high-water mark they have not enjoyed has not enjoyed a record since the morning of June 20th, 2005; somewhat ironically, it was the Angels that knocked the Rangers from that vantage point later that evening in Anaheim, crushing the spirit of a second-place Rangers team by winning the first leg of a three-game series they would ultimately sweep and contributing to a ghastly 1-8 collapse on the part of the Rangers that single-handedly knocked Texas out of contention for the season.

Neither Kevin Millwood nor Joe Saunders were participants in that mid-summer skirmish four long years ago, but the two will clash in Arlington tonight with something more than mere pride on the line, and you can bet that Hank Blalock and Michael Young, the lone two holdovers from that 2005 squad that currently reside on the major league roster, will be looking to slice Anaheim's jugular and bury their hated divisional rival much the same way that they themselves were buried four years ago.

It's so much fun to be able to get excited about Rangers baseball again.

Quick Hits: Closer Frank Francisco (right biceps tendinitis) threw on flat ground for seven minutes from roughly 60 feet on Thursday, and is slated to throw long toss later today and throw a bullpen session on Saturday; the absolute best-case scenario for his return to the bullpen is Sunday, but it's more likely Texas will attempt to withhold Francisco from that afternoon's game in order to give him the extra day of rest supplied by Monday's off-day.