the Rangers were signing Corey Seager to a 10 year, $325 million deal<\/a>. In a two day period, a team that had just lost 102 games committed a half-billion dollars to two of the best free agents available. And they still weren\u2019t done, agreeing to terms with free agent pitcher Jon Gray on a four year deal. All three players were officially signed right before the owners locked out the players, resulting in an especially frustrating period where our celebration over the new acquisitions was muted due to the uncertainty of the coming 2022 season.<\/p>\nSeager, of course, was the prize addition, and so far appears to be one of the best signings in Texas Rangers history. He\u2019s who we think of first when we think about the big moves that offseason that kickstarted the return to contention, ultimately culminating in a World Series title in 2023, the first in franchise history.<\/p>\n
But it all started with Marcus Semien.<\/p>\n
And now, Semien is gone, traded with three years left on his deal, to the New York Mets for Brandon Nimmo. Gray is gone, a free agent, his career in question because of ongoing health issues. Corey Seager is still here, of course, and hopefully isn\u2019t going anywhere. But both the roster and the dynamics of this club are much different now.<\/p>\n
Marcus Semien\u2019s final season with the Rangers was much like his first and third seasons with the team. He was excellent defensively, not so excellent offensively. He won a Gold Glove, and gets a good chunk of credit for the Rangers\u2019 team Gold Glove award in 2025. He also put up a 97 OPS+ and an 89 wRC+, which isn\u2019t ideal.<\/p>\n
Semien slashed .230\/.305\/.364 in 2025, and regardless of circumstances, that\u2019s not what you want. He did have a noticeable home\/road split, slashing .217\/.303\/.314 at home and .242\/.308\/.410 on the road. He also missed the final six weeks of the season, and one could possibly surmise that his overall slash line would have looked better had he not missed that time, since over the course of his career, his OPS by month goes up in orderly fashion, lowest in April, second lowest in May, and so on. He has a career 815 OPS in the month of September, 59 points better than his career OPS, and his 65 career homers in the final month of the season is 19 more than his second highest month (August, natch).<\/p>\n
Looking at Semien\u2019s offensive profile, you can see how he would be particularly affected by the Shed in 2025, and the way the ball just flat didn\u2019t travel well there. Semien hits the ball in the air a lot, particularly to the pull side \u2014 in his four seasons with the Rangers, he had just two opposite field home runs. However, he\u2019s never hit the ball particularly hard \u2014 his hard hit rate was right at his career average in 2025, but was just good enough to be in the 17th percentile in 2025, per Statcast.<\/p>\n
Hitting the ball in the air but not particularly hard is how you end up with a .251 BABIP, which is what Semien sported in 2025. It was tied for fourth lowest among 145 qualifying hitters in 2025, behind Eugenio Suarez, Josh Bell, and Cal Raleigh, and tied with Sal Perez. And if the ball isn\u2019t carrying, that exacerbates the power problem, since you aren\u2019t picking up doubles as much either. Semien\u2019s 16 doubles in 2025 were the lowest in a full season in his career, and even if you extrapolate it out to 160 games like he usually plays, it would be the lowest total. His ISO of .134 was the second lowest of his career, behind only 2018, when he had a .133 ISO.<\/p>\n
Marcus Semien is still a good player. In 127 games, he put up 2.1 fWAR and 3.3 bWAR. At the age of 35, he is obviously in the decline phase of his career, but a 2-4 win second baseman has value, and I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any question he will work to get as much as he can out of himself for the remainder of his contract.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll just be doing it with the Mets, instead of the Rangers, going forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the 2025 Texas Rangers season having come to an end, we shall be, over the course of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2393],"tags":[52311,5,4,149,1567,69,3240],"class_list":{"0":"post-554554","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas-rangers","8":"tag-2025-season-in-review","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-rangers","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-rangers","14":"tag-texasrangers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116013583856817745","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}