HOUSTON, TEXAS – JULY 31: Cam Smith #11 of the Houston Astros reacts near Ezequiel Duran #20 of the Texas Rangers after hitting a triple during the fourth inning against the Texas Rangers at Daikin Park on July 31, 2026 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Alex Slitz/Getty Images)
Alex Slitz/Getty Images
HOUSTON — With first place on the line and the trade deadline fast approaching, the Rangers arrived in Houston Friday to find Corey Seager and his big bat waiting for them.
Talk about your deadline acquisitions.
Now, to put things into perspective: Can he be Yordan Alvarez for the next two months?
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The Astros, who have ridden Alvarez’s broad back all season, dumped the Rangers out of first place in the AL West — and not very politely, either — in an 11-2 thumping at Daikin Park.
Alvarez has shown what an MVP-caliber slugger can do for a flawed offense. The Rangers are hoping Seager can do the same with an offense that has hustled, scratched and clawed, but hasn’t regularly imposed its will on opponents.
Seager had a pair of hits in his first game back; Alvarez reached four times in five plate appearances, including perhaps the game’s biggest hit, a two-out, two-run single to give Houston an early three-run lead. There’s a difference.
“Corey looked good, had a great swing,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “It looked kind of like vintage Corey. He has such good power to all fields.”
OK, but can he match what Alvarez has done for Houston?
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“He’s done it before, so he can,” Schumaker said of Seager, while being clear to insist he doesn’t need Seager to pull off Alvarez’s MVP run for the next two months.
HOUSTON, TEXAS – JULY 31: Corey Seager #5 of the Texas Rangers singles during the first inning against the Houston Astros at Daikin Park on July 31, 2026 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Alex Slitz/Getty Images)
Alex Slitz/Getty Images
The win also clinched the season series for the Astros, who have won seven of the first 11 meetings. It’s meaningful beyond the Silver Boot; the head-to-head tiebreaker gives Houston’s half-game lead in the AL West more weight.
It’s now a full decade since the Rangers won a season series against the Astros. The best they’ve done since 2017 is a 5-5 split in 2020 when nobody was in the stadium. They are 23-49 in Houston over the last 10 years. The Astros have worn the Silver Boot so long, they’ve had to cobble new soles on them.
This year, the boot might actually mean something. With the top of the division bunched so tightly, a tie for the division title could instead be a ticket to the offseason recliner for the Rangers. In the Great Playoff Expansion, division title ties are broken not by an extra playoff game, but by math. The Rangers’ math doesn’t “math,” as the kids would say.
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For much of this odyssey against the Astros, Alvarez has played the part of the Cyclops. He has smashed the Rangers over and over. He carried a .312/.422/.659/1.081 OPS against the Rangers into Friday’s game, then singled in each of his first two at-bats, the latter driving home two runs with two outs in the second inning to turn it into a three-run rally. He reached four times in five plate appearances. The Astros didn’t even let him face infielder Nicky Lopez, who came on to pitch in the eighth inning. Call it a mercy rule.
Over the 52 games prior to Friday, Alvarez had slashed .332/.443/.616/1.059 to almost single-handedly carry the pitching-thin Astros back up the AL West standings.
The Rangers’ answer to Alvarez is supposed to be Seager, who returned to the lineup after missing most of the last 10 weeks, including each of the first 10 meetings against the Astros. Since joining the Rangers, Seager has had a nice – though not dominant – OPS of .859 against Houston. Had that great mic drop moment about the Astros back in 2023, though.
Seager’s produced multiple 50-game stretches with a 1.000 or better OPS in 2023 and another in 2024, but none since. He entered Friday with a .667 OPS for 51 games.
Batting third on Friday, he singled in his first at-bat back and later doubled and scored. But when the Rangers had two on with two outs in the third, when the game was still relatively close, Seager struck out on three straight pitches against Hunter Brown.
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“Everything felt good,” Seager said. “It’s nice to feel good out there for sure.”
Perhaps the better question is not if Seager can carry the Rangers, but if he’ll even get the chance. If the Rangers flop over this weekend and fall further behind Houston, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that a below-.500 team in chase mode would fold its cards and sell. And if they do sell, they may have to at least consider whether Seager — and the core built around him — still fits their future.
Texas Rangers starting pitcher Nathan Eovaldi reacts after giving up a home run to Houston Astros’ Isaac Paredes during the fifth inning of a baseball game Friday, July 31, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
David J. Phillip/AP Photo/David J. Phillip
To be fair, on Friday not even Seager could rescue the Rangers. Nathan Eovaldi, their best big-game pitcher, laid an egg.
Eovaldi could not force his splitter below the zone for chases. The Astros’ three-run second inning began with a double on a splitter and all three runs came on hits against the splitter. In the fifth, Isaac Paredes and Christian Walker pummeled splitters for back-to-back homers. And the fastballs were up, too. Cam Smith and Jeremy Pena had back-to-back hits on fastballs in the zone for a run in the fourth.
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From there, the game was little more than a countdown to the Friday fireworks show. The theme: “2016.”
Ironically, that’s the last time the Rangers won a season series against Houston. Maybe they should have stayed and searched for inspiration.
Schumaker pointed out that they have bounced back repeatedly this season. They’ll have to do it again—and quickly.
Otherwise, it could be a long weekend and an even longer final two months. More significantly, another stumble before the deadline could force the Rangers to reconsider not only this season, but the core of the club and its future.
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For the last four years, that core has been Corey Seager.