The Texas Rangers won the first championship in franchise history Wednesday night, defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks 5–0 in Game 5 of the World Series.

The Rangers went undefeated on the road this postseason and won every game in which they scored first.

On Wednesday night, that first run didn’t come until the seventh inning. Arizona starter Zac Gallen didn’t allow a hit through six innings. However, Rangers starter Nathan Eovaldi repeatedly wiggled out of jams, stranding nine runners through the first five innings, to match Gallen zero-for-zero through those first six innings.

Texas then greeted Gallen with three straight hits and their first run to open the seventh, later icing the game in the ninth with four runs off Diamondbacks’ closer Paul Sewald, capped by a two-run home run by Marcus Semien.

Corey Seager, who hit .286/.375/.762 with three home runs on the Series—including two singles, a walk, and that first run scored Wednesday night—was named Most Valuable Player.

The title is the fourth for manager Bruce Bochy, who came out of retirement to manage the Rangers this year after previously leading the Giants to three titles in a five-year span from 2010 to 2014. The Rangers, meanwhile, are the third team in the last seven years to win the first World Series in their franchise history, following the 2017 Astros and 2019 Nationals.

The Rangers came into existence as the expansion Washington Senators in 1961 and moved to Arlington, Texas, in 1972. They made their first playoff appearance in 1996 and previously lost the 2010 and 2011 World Series, the former to Bochy’s Giants and the latter after twice being one strike away from the championship.

The Rangers are the third team to win the World Series two years after losing 100 games (Texas lost 102 in 2021), joining the 1914 Braves and 1969 Mets, both of whom earned the “miracle” appellation for their accomplishment.

That quick turnaround is the result of the aggressiveness of the Rangers’ front office under general manager Chris Young since the end of the 2021 season. To Young’s credit, even when signing both Seager and Semien to nine-figure contracts in December 2021, he told the press that his goal was contention not in 2022 but in 2023.

Last offseason, he shifted his focus to the team’s pitching, signing Eovaldi, Jacob deGrom, and Andrew Heaney, among others, and those additions (despite deGrom succumbing to injury early this season) combined with prospects Evan Carter, Josh Jung, and Leody Taveras, deadline pick-ups Jordan Montgomery, Max Scherzer, and Aroldis Chapman, earlier additions Mitch Garver and Jon Gray, and 2021 holdovers Adolis García, José Leclerc, Nathaniel Lowe, Jonah Heim, Dane Dunning, and Josh Sborz (who closed out Wednesday’s game) to exceed even Young’s expectations for this season.

With that, the Hot Stove is officially lit. Teams can resume trading players from their 40-man rosters Thursday and can start signing free agents from other teams on Monday. Monday is also the deadline for option decisions and qualifying offers, so there should be a flurry of news in the next few days.