{"id":55921,"date":"2025-05-26T11:55:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T11:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/55921\/"},"modified":"2025-05-26T11:55:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T11:55:12","slug":"taking-stock-after-a-third-of-the-season-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/55921\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking stock after a third of the season"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO \u2014 Hang the banner. The Texas Rangers<\/a> were not swept by the Chicago White Sox and did not post a winless road trip. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the little victories, right? The big ones have been far and few between this season anyways. The Rangers, at 26-28 and third place in the American League West, have now completed a third of their season and are just two days removed from what could arguably be considered their lowest point of the year<\/a>. <\/p>\n

That makes for a critical and interesting juncture. Let\u2019s dive in. <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take stock of this offense at the 33% mark<\/p>\n

Rangers<\/p>\n

Be the smartest Rangers fan. Get the latest news.<\/p>\n

The Rangers have played 54 games \u2014 or exactly one-third of the regular season \u2014 and have now left any chatter of a slow start in the rearview mirror. Texas\u2019 offensive struggles (which include bottom-five rankings in runs scored and on base plus slugging percentage) can no longer be attributed to skids and scuffles. <\/p>\n

The sample size is simply too large. What they\u2019ve been is what they are: a team with a suspect offense that\u2019s outweighed a fantastic rotation. This can be changed and improved upon in the next two-thirds of the season, of course, but a drastic turnaround will be required. <\/p>\n

Case in point: There have been 28 different teams that\u2019ve posted an OPS the same or worse as these Rangers (.650) through their first 54 games of their respective seasons in the Wild Card era (1995). Only four of those teams finished better than bottom-five leaguewide in OPS at the end of the season and just one ranked better than the bottom third. The takeaway: Teams with a significant weakness for an entire third of the season don\u2019t often become drastically better in that area over time. <\/p>\n

Rangers manager Bruce Bochy<\/a> was asked after Sunday\u2019s 5-4 win against the White Sox to give an assessment on the season\u2019s first trimester. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019d be nice to be at full strength for a while,\u201d Bochy started. \u201cNot just for a few games, have all your guys healthy, we\u2019re missing some pieces as you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not wrong. The Rangers six leaders in OPS \u2014 Corey Seager, Josh Jung, Wyatt Langford, Josh Smith, Jonah Heim and Jake Burger \u2014 have played in just one game together this season. <\/p>\n

Seager (hamstring), Jung (neck) and Langford (oblique) have each spent time on the injured list. Burger did a 10-day stint at Triple-A Round Rock. Smith is a utility player and isn\u2019t necessarily guaranteed to start and Heim has to split time at catcher with Kyle Higashioka. <\/p>\n

That, of course, does not cover the entirety of the Rangers\u2019 offensive struggles. In fact, in the one game that sextet played together, the Rangers were shut out by the Los Angeles Dodgers. It is difficult to build a consistent offense when the lineup is not whole though. <\/p>\n

\u201dMeanwhile we\u2019re trying to hold ground,” Bochy continued. \u201cI really believe that once we get everybody healthy and everything, yeah, we\u2019re going to run off some streaks here. Meanwhile, we\u2019ve got to find a way to win ballgames.\u201d<\/p>\n

And quickly. <\/p>\n

So, do they still have a chance to make the playoffs?<\/p>\n

Mathematically? Of course. Anecdotally? That, too, given that there\u2019s still 108 games left to play in the regular season and the division is objectively weak. Historic precedence, though, is where things become murky. <\/p>\n

There have been 1,215 teams in baseball history to post the same or worse record as this year\u2019s Rangers team through 54 games, according to Stathead, but only 44 of those teams reached the postseason. <\/p>\n

That is a 3.6% success rate and it doesn\u2019t get prettier. Of the 44 teams from that pool that did clinch a playoff berth, only one scored fewer runs and only three had a lower OPS than these Rangers have in their first 54 games. To whittle things down a bit, because 1,200-plus teams of varying success is an awfully large sample size, there have been 188 teams to start the season with the exact same record as these Rangers through 54 games. Sixteen of those teams, or about 8.5%, reached the playoffs. None had a worse offense than the Rangers do. <\/p>\n

Look, these figures are not law, and the high variance of an individual baseball season can render historical data such as the pile listed above as moot. It does however reflect the inauspicious position that the Rangers are in and the effort it will take to get out of it. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on in the bullpen? <\/p>\n

The Rangers\u2019 relief staff was once an afterthought in comparison to the team\u2019s woeful offense. It still may be, frankly, but it isn\u2019t as steady as it once was. <\/p>\n

Veteran right-hander Chris Martin and his bullpen-best 1.83 ERA is halfway through an injured list stint<\/a> to address his shoulder. His absence puts added stress on the bullpen which, if this weekend\u2019s series against the White Sox is proof, may have a new workflow. <\/p>\n

The Rangers used right-handed pitcher Luke Jackson \u2014 who had almost exclusively served as closer for them in the season\u2019s first month-and-a-half \u2014 in the sixth inning of back-to-back games on Saturday and Sunday. <\/p>\n

Jackson entered each game at a relatively critical point. He relieved right-hander Jacob Webb with two runners on base and two outs in the sixth inning of Saturday\u2019s loss, and on Sunday, replaced starter Patrick Corbin with the go-ahead run at third base with one out in the sixth. <\/p>\n

Bochy said that they plan to use Jackson in \u201cdifferent areas\u201d and that he\u2019ll still close some games. He believed both matchups Saturday and Sunday favored Jackson. <\/p>\n

Bochy trusted left-hander Robert Garcia, who\u2019s 0.5 WAR leads all Texas relievers according to Baseball Reference, to close Sunday\u2019s game. He said postgame that he\u2019s comfortable with Garcia in the seventh, eighth and ninth and continue to pitch him in whichever high-leverage pocket works best. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s a spicy burger<\/p>\n

Or something like that. Most of the good Jake Burger-related puns have been taken. <\/p>\n

Anyways, in the second inning of Sunday\u2019s win, Burger launched a two-run home run that carried an exit velocity of 114.7 mph. That\u2019s quite fast. It was the hardest ball that any Rangers batter has hit this season and just one of three hit harder than 113 mph. <\/p>\n

It was the third hardest-hit ball during Bochy\u2019s tenure with the Rangers. Only Adolis Garc\u00eda (who hit a 116.1 mph double last year) and Ezequiel Duran (who hit a 115.2 mph home run two years ago) have logged batted balls with higher exit velocities. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s kind of just what Burger does when he\u2019s at his best. Sunday\u2019s home run, for reference, was only the seventh hardest hit ball of his career. His best was a 118.2 mph home run two seasons ago. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why they play indoors<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a hat tip to the Rangers public relations department for this nugget of obscure information: Texas has played a league-high 15 road games with a game time temperature below 63 degrees this season and is 3-12 in those games. <\/p>\n

Further research, courtesy of Stathead, contextualized that record. The Rangers\u2019 .200 win percentage is the second-lowest among all teams that have played 15 or more road games in those conditions since the 1995 season. Only Cleveland, who went 2-13 (.133) during the 2003 season, fared worse in chilly temperatures. <\/p>\n

The good news is that summer is less than a month away. <\/p>\n

It\u2019ll heat up these ballparks. Maybe it\u2019ll heat up the Rangers too. <\/p>\n

\"AEW<\/a>Mercedes Mone, \u2018Hangman\u2019 Adam Page punch tickets to AEW All In: Texas main events<\/a><\/p>\n

The men\u2019s and women\u2019s Owen Hart Foundation tournament champions earned their spots Sunday night.<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/a>Texas Rangers show renewed sense of urgency in ninth-inning rally against the White Sox<\/a><\/p>\n

First baseman Jake Burger said the team entered Sunday looking to win \u2018by any means necessary.\u2019<\/p>\n

Find more Rangers coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Click or tap here to sign up for our Rangers newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO \u2014 Hang the banner. The Texas Rangers were not swept by the Chicago White Sox and did…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2393],"tags":[5,3321,384,400,7530,395,3316,4,149,185,1567,69,3240,385],"class_list":{"0":"post-55921","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas-rangers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-bruce-bochy","10":"tag-corey-seager","11":"tag-jake-burger","12":"tag-jonah-heim","13":"tag-josh-jung","14":"tag-listicle","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-rangers","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-texas","19":"tag-texas-rangers","20":"tag-texasrangers","21":"tag-wyatt-langford"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114574008328655925","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55921","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=55921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}