The Texas Rangers, despite a bit of a late-season downturn, are now just two wins away from making it to the World Series for the first time in 13 years after taking a 5-4 victory over the AL West champion and reigning World Series holder Houston Astros in Game 2 of the ALCS. While there are plenty of players on the Rangers roster deserving of praise, starting pitcher Nathan Eovaldi stands out as the team's hero in Game 2, especially after he managed to wiggle his way out of a no outs, bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the fifth inning.

And by no means did that undertaking come easy for Eovaldi; the Rangers starter had to face Yainer Diaz, Jose Altuve, and Alex Bregman, with the latter two being two of the best hitters in baseball. Eovaldi struck out Diaz and Altuve and induced a harmless groundball from Bregman, and the Rangers' 5-2 lead at that point remained intact.

While credit must go to Nathan Eovaldi for keeping his composure in the face of that kind of adversity, the Rangers starter also credited his former teammate Alex Rodriguez, back when the two were with the New York Yankees, for helping him approach those kinds of situations with a clear action plan so as to limit the damage. And clearly, it worked.

“You're the one who got me on that back in 2015. It's like, you got to use that high fastball,” Eovaldi said in an appearance on the MLB on FOX booth with Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and David Ortiz. “You can't just keep the outside-down. And I mean, it's been a game changer.”

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Alex Rodriguez, for all the deserved flak he gets for being, by and large, one of the most prominent faces of steroid usage, definitely knows baseball a whole lot better than 99 percent of the world's population. It's incredible that Rodriguez, in his latter playing years, was able to at least give back to youngsters such as Nathan Eovaldi and help them with their careers moving forward, which evidently helped the Rangers on Monday night.

Now, the Rangers are heading home with a 2-0 series lead over the Astros and a golden chance to take a commanding 3-0 lead with the returning Max Scherzer set to return to the mound.