The 2025 calendar year began with a decent amount of hopes and is unfortunately ending with Texas Rangers’ fans feeling a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of the organization.
Seems every team around the Rangers is getting better or making moves for constant improvement heading into a new year and Texas is slashing payroll at an astronomical rate by dipping into the smaller free agent pot to fill out their roster.
All that said and done, 2025 wasn’t all that poor for the Rangers. They had some wins and here are three of the biggest.
3 biggest wins for the Texas Rangers in 20251. Getting a fully healthy year with Jacob deGrom
It was the number one question when the Rangers signed deGrom to that five-year deal prior to the 2023 season, would he ever pitch a full season again? It was a fair question as Major League Baseball hadn’t seen it happen since the 2019 season. Excluding the shortened COVID season, he only appeared in 35 games in four seasons.
As we know now, deGrom not only made 30 starts in 2025 but he did so to the tune of a 2.97 ERA and a WHIP of 0.92, which was a Rangers’ starter first-ever full season of below 1.00. He was named the American League Comeback Player of the Year and reinstated himself as one of the best pitchers in baseball.
For Texas, it will be nice to head into 2026 with deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi at the helm of the rotation, especially with a lot of uncertainty surrounding the team next year.
2. Having the guts to make the hard decisions
It’s hard to do but Chris Young and the front office did it. They made the move to get rid of deadweight despite the nostalgia attached to them.
It started with the release of Jonah Heim and Adolis Garcia prior to the November non-tender deadline and it continued with the trading of their Gold Glove second baseman Marcus Semien to the Mets. Young himself admitted how difficult it was to make those choices but it was needed.
These three were not performing to the level they were during their championship run two years ago and after trying to get them back on the right track over the last two years, it wasn’t working and needed to be changed. Unsure where Texas goes forward from here but it’s the step in the right direction.
3. Valuing the future by holding onto future impact players
One of the biggest moves the Rangers didn’t make this offseason is abandoning their future for MLB ready talent to make a push at another championship. Yes, I am talking about not getting rid of their top overall prospect Sebastian Walcott.
They also made the choice to not push the 19-year-old too far and let him grow and learn on his own. No telling how that will evolve moving forward but pushing him to be ready before he actually his can only hurt him.
Transitioning to an underrated move for the Rangers this offseason, it was clearly protecting right-handed pitcher David Davaillo from the Rule 5 Draft. Following a strong 2025 season, the 23-year-old will enter 2026 trying to one-up it. He has a sneaky potential to be headline a Rangers’ future rotation.