You can only listen to “Don’t Stop Believin’” — or any song, for that matter — so many times in a short period before it starts to get old. I know the title of that song is giving me the blueprint to sports fandom, but it’s getting really, really hard to do that with the Texas Rangers.
There isn’t much more to say about the current state of the Rangers. The offense is putrid, while the pitching staff, particularly the starting rotation, has uplifted the team to the mediocre record it currently possesses. That’s the complete story. And it sucks.
Texas lost its third consecutive series last night after falling 2-0 to the Toronto Blue Jays. They’ve lost eight of their last ten games — their only two wins came against the lowly Chicago White Sox and the middling Toronto Blue Jays — and are now 27-30 and 4½ games behind the AL West-leading Seattle Mariners. Over that 10-game stretch, the Rangers were held to five or fewer runs in every single contest. While the storybook isn’t completely closed, it’s hard to imagine things turning around to such an extent that the Rangers find themselves chasing a ring by the time this season is all said and done.
So, with the 2025 Rangers looking to be set in stone, questions now arise about what next steps can be taken to ensure that 1) this team changes course and becomes good enough to make a postseason push, or 2) that Texas is set up well for the future.
It’s the first question that I’ll attempt to answer today, with the second question being answered in another Rangers Roundup sometime down the line, should this problem of a season continue down the horrific course it’s currently on.
There’s no question that what the Rangers are doing right now is not good enough. Chris Young and Bruce Bochy would certainly tell you that this was not the vision they had when constructing this roster over the offseason. In fact, it’s the complete polar opposite of where everybody thought they’d be.
Before the start of the season, countless media outlets poured out their praise for what the Rangers did in the offseason and posited how it was bound to pay dividends via a return to the postseason. What those projections were counting on, of course, was that the players on the roster would play up to their pay grade, and that obviously hasn’t happened.
Let’s just go down the list. Marcus Semien, the $175 million man who was brought to Texas to help the franchise win a World Series for the first time in its history — which he successfully achieved in 2023 — is currently slashing .173/.260/.224 (.484 OPS) and has an OPS+ of 45, all career lows. He’s slowly been dropped in the lineup, as he started off hitting leadoff, only to be slid down to fifth in the order about 20 or so games into the year. After that didn’t work out, he’s been shuffled around in the bottom of the lineup, mostly in the nine hole.
His fall off, from one of the best players on the roster to now being so unreliable at the plate that he might be giving Bochy no other choice but so sit him, is unbelievable. I have no words. Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News, however, does. Here’s what he had to say about Semien’s last month of play, and the history that he’s making in the process:
“In May, which coincides with the change in hitting coaches, Semien is hitting .163 with a .464 OPS. He has one extra-base hit for the month and one double for the season. His .484 OPS for the season makes it one of the worst starts by any MLB regular in the last decade. Since 2016, only three other players have had 200 or more plate appearances by the end of May and an OPS below .490. For context, the former Ranger Chris Davis, whose rapid decline in 2018 was legendary, was at .483 at the end of May.”
Just brutal.
Adolis García, the hero of the 2023 postseason for the Rangers, where he hit eight home runs and drove in a record-breaking 22 runs, has regressed so much in the past two years that conversations about moving him down to Triple-A or even cutting him have been circulating for several weeks. I don’t believe that a move that drastic is going to be made in the immediate future, but García’s poor play has been a major bummer. If not for his amazing defense in right field, which might be the best it’s ever been, he might not even be sniffing the lineup at all.
García had always been an overzealous swinger at the plate, but was still a successful hitter because when he squared up a baseball, man did he square it up. That’s not been the case this season, and he’s made it worse by chasing at such an extreme rate. According to Baseball Savant, García’s 2025 chase rate is an abysmal 40.7%, up from 33.6% a season ago. In 2023, his most successful season in the big leagues, that number was at 29.3%, which was a career low.
Grant had this to say about the two players and their future prospects in the lineup:
“The Rangers have done everything they can to facilitate that and help the veteran duo get started. They’ve had the luxury of giving them extra time since there has been a shortage of position players. But even that ‘luxury’ may be evaporating.”
Meanwhile, the new acquisitions of Joc Pederson and Jake Burger have been massive disappointments in their first year in Arlington. Pederson, in particular, came out of the gates so slowly with his 0-for-41 (perhaps in honor of Dirk Nowitzki?) slump that he was immediately out of the good graces of the fans. He’s since turned it around slightly, but a fractured hand from a hit-by-pitch several days ago put his season on hold for the time being.
I won’t go down the entire lineup and dog on everybody and their lackluster performances, but just know that it’s not great. One glance at the statistics for the Rangers’ hitters, and you’d get a good understanding that this offense is playing far below its potential. And that’s really a shame, because the vision for this team was to hit, hit, and hit, while the pitching did just enough to keep other teams at bay. That’s what worked out so well in 2023, and there was no reason for Young and the rest of the front office and coaching staff to doubt that it could work again.
But with it not going as planned, questions now persist about how to fix it. Are there trades that could be made to bolster the lineup and get everything on track? Is there anybody in the farm system who could come up to the big league club and ignite a spark, similar to what Evan Carter did for the 2023 team when he arrived in Arlington late that season? What about the coaching staff? Are there any more moves to be made in that department that would shake things up enough to get the team moving in the right direction?
The short answer: no.
In my opinion, and it pains me to say this, there is nothing that can be done to fix this team in the short term. No trade, no free agent signing, no minor league call-up, and no change to the coaching staff would be enough to rattle the cage enough to make the 2025 Texas Rangers a winning baseball team. It just is what it is.
That doesn’t mean that the front office isn’t going to attempt to make everything work. If I know Chris Young, he’ll fight tooth and nail to get the Rangers on the correct path. I commend him so much for what he was able to do to bring the franchise its first championship, and it’s that competitive spirit that makes him a fantastic person to be at the helm of a baseball team. But I think that no matter what he does, it won’t be enough. This team is beyond repair. They are broken.
That’s the phrase that I’ve seen thrown around most by media members and fans throughout the first two months of the season: the Rangers are broken. Night in and night out, we sit and watch as the pitching staff throws a gem, only for the offense to not back them up as the team goes on to lose. It’s the most discouraging form of the sport, and it’s probably making some fans of the team lose interest, or at least lose their minds.
Sometimes broken things can be repaired. If you have a toilet that’s not operating properly, you call a plumber. If the lights won’t come on in your house, you call an electrician (or just change the light bulbs). But if you have a broken baseball team, who do you call? Your local congressman? Your grandma? Your old roommate from college whom you haven’t spoken to in 20 years and honestly don’t ever wish to speak to again? None of the above. The true answer is that there is nobody to call, and there is no way for the problem to be corrected. We can do all the whining and complaining we want, but it’ll do nothing. The only thing to do is sit and wait, and hope that maybe, just maybe, it fixes itself. Unfortunately, it probably won’t.