Thursday's game against the archrival Angels earned the team's best numbers on cable's Fox Sports Southwest in six seasons. The game scored a 5.9 rating, not quite the 6.1 the Rangers earned for a May 2004 game but enough to win the night for Fox Sports Southwest in the Dallas-Fort Worth market.

The 5.9 rating represents 149,860 homes. The game peaked in the final innings at a 7.5 rating (190,500 homes).

Since the All-Star break, the Rangers are averaging a 4.9 rating on Fox Sports Southwest (124,500 homes). That's about twice the team's average before the break.

Having six Rangers in the All-Star Game (yes, that includes Cliff Lee ) paid off big time for Fox in Dallas-Fort Worth. The game scored a healthy 9.1 rating (231,100 homes) locally. That represented a 65 percent increase over the 2009 game.

It was good for 18th place among the 56 major markets. That may not sound like much, but D-FW had finished 50th or worse in the previous four games.