SEATTLE -- They're back.

For the middle leg of their 10-day road trip, the Rangers head to Oakland where barely three weeks ago they were swept, the bullpen in tatters, looking up at Seattle in the AL West standings and facing the impending loss of Rougned Odor.

Things look quite different now.

After a 6-4 win Sunday over Seattle to win their seventh consecutive series -- every series since that Oakland sweep -- the Rangers have a five-game lead in the division, the back end of the bullpen seems again impregnable, Odor has returned and his temporary fill-in, Jurickson Profar has staked a claim in the lineup, as well.

And perhaps most important, the team with the best record in the AL seems to know how good it is.

"We have a lot of confidence in ourselves, and we know it," shortstop Elvis Andrus said as he tugged on a natty teal suit, the haberdashery of the truly confident. "We feel very comfortable playing any team. We know who we are, but we are also humble about how we play the game. We take nothing for granted."

The weekend in Seattle demonstrated again just how good this team is playing.

On the road, against their closest pursuer, the Rangers dropped the opener in sloppy fashion. All they did was rally back from being down to their last strike in the second game to tie it on a homer from struggling slugger Prince Fielder and then take the lead on Rougned Odor's 11th-inning homer. They got spectacular defense from Ian Desmond and three innings of scoreless relief from the bullpen trio of Matt Bush, Jake Diekman and Sam Dyson.

About 14 hours later, they calmly overcame a developing slump with runners in scoring position. Andrus, who had been struggling, saw to that with a run-scoring double in the third (and another run-scoring hit in the sixth). Mitch Moreland, who had been struggling when the week began, hit his third homer in as many days. Desmond, arguably the team's most important player all year, delivered another two-run, two-out hit to open up a big lead. And Cole Hamels gave the Rangers seven innings, which allowed manager Jeff Banister to maximize his options for a fill-in starter for Yu Darvish on Monday against Oakland. Cesar Ramos will get the call.

It pushed the Rangers to 6-1 in the "rubber game" of a series this year. Banister likes to talk about his team's ability to "knock them off one at a time" when discussing series. Banister also demurs when talking about individual aspects or players on the club.

"We are greater than the sum of our parts," he has taken to saying.

Hamels, the one player in the clubhouse who actually has a world championship, knows what it takes to knock those series off consistently. It's what he sees in the Rangers clubhouse. He sees old and young talent blending. And he sees accountability.

"Guys don't get too down when they give up runs or have an o-fer," Hamels said. "They come back the next day, fresh and happy and ready to make a difference. That's the special part about it. The coaching staff has kept us on it and kept us going every day. The organization had to look up our genetic makeup to know if we could handle it. We have been able to mesh really well.

"Even if you don't put up elite numbers all the time, if you are able to bring something to the game every single day, that's almost more important," Hamels said. "If you can make a difference with all those guys, that's something special."

Right now, there is no other way to describe it: What the Rangers have going on is something special.

Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant