LAS VEGAS — Now, for their next trick, the Rangers will attempt to improve their offense with one hand and consider offers for their best hitter with the other.
Is that considered a juxtaposition?
It’s certainly a precarious position.
That’s the situation the cash-strapped Rangers are in, though, as they consider whether the five pricey years left on shortstop Corey Seager’s contract should be liquidated to help allocate resources elsewhere. If you ask Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young at baseball’s general managers meetings about it, he said the club is not tied to one particular direction and improvements can be made to the roster with or without the big-money deals atop their books.
That doesn’t even exclusively apply to the 26-man roster.
Joseph played two seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies and another in South Korea’s KBO league before he worked as an assistant hitting coach for the Seattle Mariners (2024) and Baltimore Orioles (2025). The 35-year-old came highly recommended from former and current players who played for him, offers credibility as a recent professional (he’s the first hitting coach in club history who played during the StatCast era) and is considered a positive energy lifter, a trait that Schumaker prioritizes and sought out.
It does not, of course, inherently guarantee production — especially given the roster’s potential state of flux — but savvy staff hires can pay dividends in the right situations. The Milwaukee Brewers, with affable manager Pat Murphy and vibe-centric assistant hitting coach Daniel Vogelbach, can attest to this. They can also attest to a talented roster, a deep pool of scouts that built it and an offensive strategy they managed to execute to perfection en route to a championship this fall.
The Rangers can, at the very least, control a third of those three factors without the need for seismic structural overhaul. They improved offensively on the surface year over year, with a .713 OPS this season compared to a .684 OPS last season, but managed to score fewer total runs, in large part because of situational failures. Their .549 OPS with the bases loaded was the worst in baseball, and in situations with runners on base or with two outs, two scenarios that can wear opponents down, they were merely average.
Young said he’s “excited about some of the things we’ve discussed” to address those deficiencies.
“We were a historically bad offense when the bases were loaded,” Young said. “Often times, bases loaded leads to crooked numbers, not single digits, not one run. We just weren’t good in those situations. I think there’s some things that we can do differently in terms of the way we approach those at-bats and approach it as a collective offense.”
He went on to say that, yes, personnel matters.
The Rangers need healthy seasons from third baseman Josh Jung (whose 128 wRC+ with runners in scoring position ranked second among the team’s everyday players) and left fielder Wyatt Langford (who posted a 1.010 OPS with the bases loaded in his first two seasons). They need another productive season from first baseman Jake Burger, possibly their best clutch hitter, and right fielder Brandon Nimmo, whose .937 OPS with runners in scoring position led the team this season. They need a deeper bench for Schumaker to employ in late-game scenarios, because despite the fact that the Rangers totaled the second-most pinch hit plate appearances this season, their .585 OPS in those spots ranked bottom third league wide.
It’d all at least give the new guy something to work with.