5 things we learned about the Rangers last week: Unremarkable AL West

The Texas Rangers celebrate a victory over the Seattle Mariners, 7-1 in a MLB game played at Globe Life Field, Saturday, July 25, 2026, in Arlington.

Steve Nurenberg/The Dallas Morning News

ARLINGTON — Did the team’s front office learn enough last week to educate their trade deadline decisions? We’ll find out sooner rather than later, but in the meantime, here’s what we learned about the Rangers last week. 

A wild week lies ahead before the trade deadline

The Aug. 3 trade deadline is officially one week away, and before it comes and goes, the Rangers will need to play the first-place Tampa Bay Rays and the third-place Houston Astros. The six-game stretch will all but certainly determine whether the Rangers buy, sell or stand pat before the trade window closes.

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The week that preceded it didn’t exactly open eyes one way or another. 

Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young said at the start of this homestand that the Rangers needed to play “winning baseball” before the trade deadline and “stack wins, get above .500 and maintain our position in the standings.”

It’s been largely a wash since.

The Rangers were unable to muster much momentum against the Chicago White Sox or Seattle Mariners and won all of two consecutive games at their best. They started last week a game above .500 and started this week a game above .500. Their lead in the American League West has grown slightly, from a half-game to a game-and-a-half, but arguably not by enough to suggest this team is a legitimate winner. If the club’s decision-makers wanted indeliable clarity on this team’s mettle over the course of the homestand, they might’ve gotten mixed reviews more than anything else, which adds even greater importance to the final six they’ll play before the deadline. 

Oh, and for the record, the “six they’ll play before the deadline” is closer to a formality than anything else. The Rangers could potentially miss their window to deal in either direction if their minds aren’t made up sooner than next Monday afternoon, because with the Boston Red Sox and Washington Nationals officially kicking off trade season this weekend, everyone else is now on the clock. 

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No one wants to get left behind. 

Yes, they’re in first place, but not all first-place teams are created equally

The Rangers are on pace to finish the regular season with an unremarkable 82-80 record. They’re also on pace to finish atop the division for the first time in a decade. It’s as uncommon of a circumstance as it sounds, because in baseball history, only one team has won their division with the same or worse record over the course of a 162-game regular season and only another has come particularly close. 

And, naturally, both have Rangers connections. 

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The 2005 San Diego Padres, led by manager Bruce Bochy, won an egregiuously weak NL West with an 82-80 record. The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, which featured utility infielder Skip Schumaker, won an also egregiously weak NL Central with an 83-78 record but only played a 161-game schedule because a game was postponed and never finished.

If you think that’s bad, check out the strike-shortened 1994 season, when the Rangers ended the season atop their division with a 52-62 record. It’s not a division winner technically, since the season was quite literally canceled Aug. 12, but their .456% win percentage remains the lowest of any team that’s ended a regular season in first place. 

Hey, least they won’t break that record, right? 

Here’s why Wyatt Langford needs to remain healthy

The short answer: Langford’s performance suggests that he is a 6.2 WAR player, per Baseball Reference, over the course of a 162-game average, which is a threshold that only 14 players in franchise history have ever reached in a single season. 

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The long answer: Langford hasn’t come particularly close to a 162-game campaign yet through two-plus years in the major leagues, and this season, even if all goes well from here on out, he can only play a maximums of 110 contests. It limits what the Rangers have confidently described as a MVP-caliber ceiling, and if you don’t believe that, consider this: only 30 players have accumulated 12.3 WAR or more through their first three big league seasons in the Wild Card era, and of that group, Langford’s total games played is among the fewest. 

It’s a neat stat at its least meaningful. 

It’s a reminder of what the Rangers are capable of at its most. The entire dynamic of their lineup changes if Langford is available, and in any given game, he can single handily swing the decision in his team’s direction. Their playoff prospects are almost entirely tied to his health, and if Langford can avoid the injured list, and if he can maintain anything close to the .323/.371/.638 slash line that he’s posted since June 1, their ceiling is raised.

The right-handed reliever problems are real

The Rangers have tiptoed around a dearth of high-leverage right-handed relievers for, well, much of this season. 

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It’s finally caught up. 

The club’s right-handed relief pitchers have yielded a 7.83 ERA since July 1, the third-worst mark in the league, and the bullpen has become exposed due to their lack of relief options. Yes, right-handed pitcher Jakob Junis has been an effective setup artist this season, but he can’t pitch every day, sometimes not even back-to-backs, and his 4.73 ERA in the last two months is slightly worrisome even if a hip impingement played a role. It’s left the group of right-handers Peyton Gray (a rookie who’s impressed but may be overextended), Cole Winn (a once-reliable arm who’s navigated serious ups and downs) and Ben Peoples (who was a career minor leaguer three weeks ago) to comprise the rest of their righty reinforcements. 

It’s imperfect to say the least, and if the Rangers do intend to contend, it should be their top deadline priority. 

A sobering Corey Seager statistic

The fact that we made it a thousand words into this without a Seager reference is a rarity for the times. 

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It’s also a tad reflective of his status. 

Seager, as of this week, has officially missed more games (54) than he’s played (51) this season. He’ll all but certainly play fewer games this season than he has in any prior season with the Rangers, and as of now, he’s missed a total of 205 games since he signed his 10-year, $325 million contract almost five years ago. That’s more than a season’s worth of games lost due to a some combination of strained hamstrings, sore backs, concussed brains and burst appendixes, and more than season’s worth of production from one of the best hitters of this generation lost.

Banners fly forever — and so do the 127 home runs he’s hit as a Ranger — but the staggered injured list stints have undoubtedly dulled a sparkle.