Monday night’s home stand opener at Globe Life Field might as well have been renamed “The Wyatt Langford game”.

Coming into play today, Langford was hitting just .160 with 0 home runs and 5 RBI in the last two weeks.

Before Rangers batting practice today, Langford was getting in early work in the cage on the field on a night where a bobblehead commemorating his cycle last year was given out.

Safe to say that early work paid off as Langford became the hero of his very own bobblehead night.

With Texas yet to get in the hit column with one out in the sixth inning, Langford lined what would end up as a game-winning two-run home run into the Rangers bullpen, providing all the offense in a 2-1 Rangers win.

Prior to the blast, the Rangers were 0-18 with two walks and six strikeouts off Rockies starter Chase Dollander, who carried a 7.71 ERA into the night.

“He [Dollander] had a lot of life to his fastball,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. “He was on top of his game, and I did talk about that. In our game, it’s the guy on the mound, and their guy threw very well; he pitched a terrific game for them”.

“He had the good breaking balls going at times, and he had that fastball that pitched up with it, so again, terrific job. You could tell in the first three innings, he was throwing the ball well and we had our hands full”.

Thankfully, the Rangers had their own guy on the bump, who pitched a terrific game as Tyler Mahle worked his 5th quality start of the year, going 6.1 innings, allowing just one run while striking out five and earning his fourth win of the season.

At the conclusion of tonight’s game, Mahle ranks 2nd amongst qualified MLB pitchers with a 1.47 ERA. He has now allowed two or fewer runs in nine straight starts to begin the season, the longest such streak in Rangers history.

Clinging on to a slim one-run lead, it was the back end of the Rangers bullpen who was once again lights out to lock this one down.

Robert Garcia came on and stranded two Rockies on base in the 7th, thanks to a huge inning-ending strikeout of Adael Amador. Then Chris Martin pitched a perfect 8th, highlighted by him snaring a 90.2 MPH line drive comebacker off the bat of Brenton Doyle.

Luke Jackson came on to try and earn the save, but the first pitch he threw was a 111 MPH line drive comebacker that caught him right in the hand. After the game, Bochy said that his X Rays came back negative but his hand swelled up right away and an IL stint may still be needed.

Thrown into one of the toughest spots in sports, Jacob Webb came on and earned his first save of the season after the injury to Jackson, capping off what was yet another phenomenally pitched game by Texas.

“Those games get determined late in the ball game, it’s your pitching,” Bochy said. “You gotta get that timely hit, and we got it with Wyatt [Langford], we’re down 1-0 and we weren’t doing much offensively, and he came through for us and the pitching held up”.

Early [in the season] it was going our way and we were winning all those one-run games, and it kinda flip-flopped on us so it was good to get one”.