The fate of the 2026 Texas Rangers lies in the hands of two of those numbers tests that some of us at least claim to have aced on SAT tests (ages ago) as in… what comes next in this series?
The first one is not so troubling — 25, 29, 22, ???
I’ll go with 26 but it could be as high as 30, couldn’t it? Any answer in that range works fine for what the club can expect to get from Nathan Eovaldi taking the mound this season.
Now comes the harder part and the fundamental question regarding the success of Skip Schumaker‘s first Texas squad — 6, 3, 30, ???
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What do we really think Jacob deGrom has in store in Year Four with the Rangers? He was practically a mascot when this team captured the World Series in 2023, memorable mostly for a tear-filled goodbye in a dugout interview as he headed off for another arm surgery. Then a reclamation project at the end of a disappointing 2024 campaign.
Who had him penciled in for American League Comeback Player of the Year in 2025? Or for an eighth-place finish in the Cy Young voting, an award he captured in consecutive seasons last decade with the Mets?
In 2025, deGrom made his most starts since 2019, his most recent Cy Young season. The Rangers wisely brought him along slowly during spring training. When I asked Skip Schumaker if the plan was to start him in the fifth game of the regular season as the Rangers did under Bruce Bochy last year, giving him the optimum time to get ready, the new manager laughed and smiled.
“No. That is not the plan,” he said.
Schumaker’s not waiting around to see what he has.
Getting 52 starts from Eovaldi and deGrom was the key to the Rangers owning the best earned run average in baseball, even if that translated to nothing more than an 81-81 season and the end of Bochy’s time here. The Rangers need another strong campaign from the two elder statesmen on the starting staff. FanGraphs projects the Rangers to have the sixth-best rotation in the majors, third-best in the American League. Nothing wrong with that. MacKenzie Gore in the No. 3 spot figures to be an upgrade over last season, and gives the club a left-handed strikeout machine in the middle of the rotation.
“There’s a lot of right-handed pitchers in the game,’’ Schumaker said. “Trying to figure out how you can split those up the best you can to give them different looks can be challenging at times. So if you have a chance to mix it up and change eye levels and velocity and spin and all that type of stuff, I think you can do that with MacKenzie. He’s doing whatever he can to be a deGrom or an Evo one day.’’
Maybe that day comes sooner than expected. But, for now, even with the former Vanderbilt stars Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker filling out the rotation, the Rangers are asking pitchers aged 36 (Eovaldi) and 37 (deGrom) to do their heavy lifting.
For me, that places the Rangers as a fuzzy wild card contender. Even in making the assumption that an offense that sat dormant for too long last year will be jump-started by Brandon Nimmo, by a healthy Evan Carter, by a star-in-waiting in Wyatt Langford, this rotation has to be one of the league’s best for Texas to stand a chance.
The bullpen is the kind of mystery Benoit Blanc might take six months to unravel (that’s Daniel Craig to some of you). It’s a group that has potential, and the return of Josh Sborz, who threw the final seven outs of World Series Game 5, has to count for something. But until the first few weeks of the regular season reveal the roles and how they are defined, it’s just a guessing game.
The one thing we can assume is that the regulars will be strike-throwers. All others are unwelcome, Schumaker said.
“In general, I think the game overadjusted into this velocity thing, just see how hard you can throw it,’’ he said. “And then it’s like ball four, ball four. I don’t care how hard you can throw, if you can’t throw strikes, it means nothing to me. Getting guys to throw strikes, trusting our really good defense in our tough ballpark to hit — well, last year at least it was, we will see what happens.
“But I think the industry now is adjusting back to where, like, yeah, this stuff is great but we really need to throw strikes.’’
Eovaldi and deGrom know how to do that better than most. In his comeback season, deGrom limited hitters to a .197 batting average. That’s below his remarkable career .209 average. Eovaldi has always been a strike-thrower and, for Texas, a winner. He’s still the only man to win five playoff starts in one postseason.
October starts are a consideration for a later date. The Rangers won’t have any unless they get at least 50 starts from their two starting pitchers pushing 40. But make that happen again, as it did in 2025, and Schumaker‘s got another first-year playoff season to match what he achieved with the Miami Marlins three years ago.
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