TORONTO - If the Texas Rangers are going to beat the powerhouse Toronto Blue Jays in the ALDS, one way or another, they're going to have to figure out ways to neutralize baseball's best offence. So instead of being concerned and intimidated by a team that beat them in four of six meetings and twice touched them for 12 runs in a game, the Rangers are perfectly willing to acknowledge and embrace the mammoth task ahead.

"Look, we know that's a really good ball club over there," said rookie manager Jeff Banister. "We look at the numbers, we've seen it, and we've heard everything that's being said. Dynamic ball club, a lot of power, they love playing in this ballpark. We know that we've got to play well; we've got to pitch well, play well. If we do that we've got an opportunity."

"They have a great offence, there's no secret to that, and everybody knows it," added closer Shawn Tolleson, who saved 35 games in 37 opportunities - including one against the Blue Jays - but who also blew a save against Toronto. "But I think if we're intimidated as a staff then that's not a good place to start. We've got them out before, we kind of know our plan of attack against them so we're confident we can go out there and get them out."

But saying they're not concerned about the Blue Jays offence is different from actually not being concerned about it. How do they avoid that feeling? It comes down to the belief that the Rangers' pitching staff holds in their abilities.

"There's nothing that I do personally to guard for it (intimidation), it's just kind of a natural thing as a competitor," said Tolleson. "You go out there and you believe your stuff can get the guy out and so there's really no preparation for that other than us focusing on making good pitches."

Asked what he thinks of when he considers the Blue Jays line-up, Sam Dyson, a 27-year-old who made his big league debut with the Blue Jays in 2012 - tossing two-thirds of an inning before moving onto the Miami Marlins the next season - preferred to focus more on what he could control.

"Making quality pitches and executing," he said.

Feel any intimidation at all?

"No," Dyson responded with a stone cold look.

The Blue Jays finished the regular season with 891 runs scored, 127 more than the second-place New York Yankees. But the Rangers are no offence slouches themselves, finishing with 751 runs, the third most runs scored in baseball. They also have Yovani Gallardo on their side, one of the few pitchers who managed to confound Blue Jays' hitters this year on two separate occasions.

The 29-year-old Gallardo, who went to high school in the Fort Worth area, not far from Arlington where the Rangers call home, went 2-0 against the Blue Jays, tossing 13.2 scoreless innings while walking five and striking out six. One of those outings came on June 27 at the Rogers Centre where Gallardo spun a masterful 8.1 innings of shutout baseball, and held the Blue Jays to just three hits. The two games he started were the only two times that Texas beat Toronto this season.

But Gallardo, who will start Game 1 of the ALDS for the Rangers, couldn't speak to any particularly special approach that allowed him to have success against a team where so many others had failed.

"At the end of the day, it's just moving the ball around, just being aggressive in the zone and throwing strikes," he said. "That's what the game plan was and we went out there and did just that."

"If you execute pitches, you have a greater chance of success," added Banister. "Yovani is a veteran pitcher who's not going to give in, he can throw strikes. He works out on the edges and throws just enough strikes to get you in swing mode. He can go inside on you or he can go away and he can also work the vertical game as well. The one thing that you can't do is sit on any one pitch."

Josh Donaldson led the Blue Jays with 184 hits, 41 home runs and 123 RBI but even he had his struggles figuring out Gallardo, going 1-for-6 with a walk and a strikeout head to head.

"He's tough," said Donaldson. "He's evolved himself as a pitcher, his fastball command has gotten a lot better, he throws a little cutter now and he's got a nice curveball. He's done a pretty good job of evolving himself into a more complete pitcher. As a hitter, when he has that many options to go to, you have to really kind of narrow down a little bit more and take advantage of those mistakes that he's going to make because he's not going to make a whole lot of mistakes throughout the course of a game."


Respecting Russell

Rangers' rookie manager Jeff Banister spent four seasons as the bench coach with the Pittsburgh Pirates before assuming the managerial role with Texas this season. In his last two seasons in Pittsburgh, Banister worked closely with Russell Martin, who spent 2013 and 2014 with the Pirates, and came to develop a great respect for not only Martin's talent but the way in which he approaches the game.

"Russ can shut you down. He's as accurate a thrower from behind the plate as I've ever been around," said Banister. "Extremely quick, he's a shortstop playing behind the plate is what he is. He pays attention to hitters, the video that he watches and how he helps that pitching staff (is impressive). But this is a guy who plays with an edge, who wants to come and beat you every single day. It's something that I absolutely love and really admire from players that want to show up and play hard to help their team win."