BALTIMORE — Compared to the offensive disaster that was 2025, there was a tangible difference to the Rangers’ offense in the first series of the season. They took more walks, hit more homers and scored more runs. They beat an elite left-hander. They won a series on the road.
Lots of fact-based improvements. But some feel-centric ones, too.
From the start, the offense simply seemed more purposeful and intentional. And there’s a reason: At the very start of the lineup was Brandon Nimmo. There might not be a player in the lineup whose intent and purposeful approach is as visible as Nimmo. It showed all weekend, and it carried over to a 5-2 win in the series opener against Baltimore on Monday. Nimmo went 2 for 4 with an RBI and two runs scored.
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He went 4 for 12 in the Rangers’ series win at Philadelphia and reached base six times in 14 plate appearances. He chased a total of five pitches over the weekend; all five were with two strikes, the one situation in which chasing pitches out of the zone is actually the right move.
His eighth-inning walk in the opener seemed to help the offense get re-centered after a frustrating run against lefty Christopher Sanchez. He singled and stole a base ahead of Jake Burger’s two-out, two-run homer that gave the Rangers a big lead Saturday. On Sunday, he hit a two-run homer off lefty Jesus Luzardo, then later broke up a double-play by getting a good secondary lead, a good jump and going hard into second base. The Rangers ended up netting an extra run in the inning in a stadium where no lead is considered safe.
And on Monday, he started off the game at Baltimore with a two-strike single and a later head-first slide into home on a good break on a contact play to score the game’s first run. He went from a good lead at third and forced a bad throw home from pitcher Chris Bassitt. Then he singled home a run in the second.
“I’ve said it starts at the top, right?” manager Skip Schumaker said Monday. “He prepares as well as anybody I’ve been around and his trust in the process is as good as anybody I’ve been around. And he’s a really good teammate.”
On Sunday, Nimmo had said he’d worked to make his first impressions on the Rangers by “being me.”
On Monday, he elaborated, just in case it wasn’t visible enough. You know, sprinting to walks isn’t just a bit for him. It’s just how he’s wired. Go hard all the time. But with a plan.
“I’m not trying to do too much, just find the barrel,” Nimmo said of what “me” means. “Even when I’m an out, I’m trying to be a productive out. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s what you strive for over the course of 700 at-bats is to be, more often than not, productive in some way. So, being me is about being competitive. I try to work hard, but it’s about working smarter, rather than just harder. It’s trying to filter all this information we get into what’s usable and being prepared to put that to use. And once you are there, then go and let it fly, but staying within myself. What I think is me, is you are going to get the best of whatever I have for that day.
“And I like to think that makes me a leadership-by-example guy. I like to, hopefully, rub off on other people. They talk about hitting being contagious. I like to think that when you see intent, it can be contagious, too. You see a teammate breaking up a double play or really hustling or, for example, [Ezequiel] Duran battling with two strikes and doubling after missing a bunt. When you see that stuff, it just tends to really get buy-in to the whole-team approach. This guy did that? I’m going to do what it takes, too.”
Yes, it sounds like a dissertation. But when you put as much preparation into the day as Nimmo seems to, there’s a lot of thought behind it. Think of what Nathan Eovaldi meant to Rangers pitchers the last few years. Nimmo could be a similar asset for the hitters, something that was clearly lacking.
It would, of course, be convenient if Nimmo, a left-handed hitter, found another left-handed hitter to whom he could relate. Like Eovaldi did with Jack Leiter.
Hey, come to think of it, Evan Carter is a young, talented left-handed hitter, still trying to find his way.
“He has a plan for everything,” Carter said. “He is just really smart about hitting. Really smart. At-bat to at-bat adjustments. Pitch to pitch. It’s not just something he’s made up in his head. There are numbers to back it up. I’ve learned a little bit already and talked to him a bunch.”
Nobody is trying to make Carter into a clone of Nimmo, but there are some similarities to their profiles behind both being lefties.
And then Carter stopped and broke into a story. In the hitters’ meeting prior to Sunday’s game, Nimmo, who had a lot of at-bats against Luzardo, mentioned his intended approach to the pitcher if he came up with a runner on first. He realized he was about to give away too much information, so he cut to the ending.
“It’s really cool to watch him,” he said. “The homer. He literally laid out the situation in our hitters meeting, like ‘runner on first,’ … and it happened, you know what I’m saying. That’s really cool. To hear him talk about his thought process and his plan and then literally see it happen, that’s just great.”
Oh, and Carter? By the third inning Monday, he’d reached in four straight plate appearances. Back-to-back walks on Sunday after entering the game late. Back-to-back hits to start the Baltimore series. It’s almost like something is rubbing off on him.