Yesterday was a gut-check for the Texas Rangers. A pivotal moment where the season could’ve tilted toward redemption or spiraled further into the abyss. Win, and the fragile hope built over two weeks of scrappy series wins would spark a little brighter. Lose, and that flicker would get snuffed out like a torch at the end of a tribal council in Survivor.
They lost.
Josh Smith, one of the few guys on this roster still pulling their weight, nailed it after the Rangers’ 6-4 extra-innings disaster-fest against the Mariners: “Bad teams find a way to lose.”
I’m not here to dissect the box score or recap the game. If you want that, Jamey Newberg’s Substack has a gamer that’s, as always, pure gold. My goal is to dig into Smith’s words. Are the Rangers a bad team? Or is this just a frustrated player spitting venom after a winnable series slipped through their fingers?
The answer’s messy, somewhere in that gray zone between “dumpster fire” and “not dead yet.” But Smith’s got a point you can’t dodge. Every time the Rangers get a chance to flip the script, to grab this season by the throat and make it theirs, they choke. They don’t just lose, they invent ways to lose. A misplayed grounder here, a brain-dead base-running blunder there. That’s not bad luck; that’s the DNA of a team that’s lost its edge.
A couple of weeks back, I wrote about the Rangers after they got swept by the Rays in a game so ugly it made my stomach lurch. I swore I’d take a two-week break from this team, half-expecting to come back to the same old mess. And while some minor improvements have been made, not much has really changed. Back then, they were five games under .500 after that Tampa Bay debacle. Now? They’re just two games below that line. Two and a half games from a Wild Card spot, with the Blue Jays, Mariners, and Angels standing in their way. That’s progress, sure, like moving from the ICU to a regular hospital bed. You’re not dead, but you’re not exactly running marathons either.
What hasn’t changed is the real kicker: This team plays like a bad ballclub. You can feel it when you watch them. The Rangers of the early 2010s? They strutted onto the field like they owned it, a swagger that dared you to try and beat them. The 2023 squad? They carried a quiet confidence, knowing they could flip any game on its head with a potent offense that I yearn for everyday. But this 2025 crew? It’s like they’re tiptoeing through a minefield, second-guessing every step. You see it in the way they grip their bats too tight, the way they hesitate on routine plays. It’s not just losing, it’s the way they lose, like a team that’s forgotten how to believe in itself.
So yeah, Josh Smith’s right. This Rangers team, as it stands, is a bad baseball team. But here’s the twist: The postseason isn’t out of reach. The math says they’re still in the hunt, with a Wild Card berth right in front of their noses. If they can string together some wins this week against the Orioles and then gut out a strong road trip against the Padres, Angels, and Astros, that hope might still have a pulse. It’s a long shot, but it’s there.
If they don’t? Well, I’ll probably be back here in two weeks, writing the same story, just with a fresh coat of disappointment. For now, though, the Rangers are teetering on the edge. Which way they fall depends on whether they can find the grit to prove Josh Smith wrong.