{"id":795622,"date":"2026-09-03T11:16:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T11:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/795622\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T11:16:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T11:16:30","slug":"rangers-need-to-turn-two-ugly-trends-around-to-make-the-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/795622\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers need to turn two ugly trends around to make the playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ARLINGTON,<\/p>\n

ARLINGTON, TEXAS – SEPTEMBER 02: Ezequiel Duran #20 of the Texas Rangers celebrates following a home run against the Athletics during the first inning at Globe Life Field on September 02, 2026 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Stacy Revere\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Stacy Revere\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

ARLINGTON \u2014 With a chance Wednesday to sweep the Athletics right back to wherever it is they call home these days, the\u00a0Texas Rangers<\/a> began the afternoon with a homer from Ezequiel Duran. Began the second inning with one from Justin Foscue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Best you don\u2019t ask about the rest of the afternoon. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The A\u2019s homered five times. Jonah Heim, who got a tribute video for his time in Texas, hit one of them. Even smiled. The Rangers did nothing the rest of the day and took a 9-2 shellacking<\/a>. It clinched the season series for the A\u2019s. Good thing the Rangers won\u2019t have to worry about any tiebreakers there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n

You get the picture. It was an ugly game. The good news: Ugly as it was, it doesn\u2019t really matter. \u00a0Even now. The Rangers won the series. That\u2019s what they have to do. And that\u2019s how they have to look at the final 22 games. Or, rather, the final seven series. Win each series. Nothing else matters. Win each series and they\u2019ll end up with at least 84 wins. In this year\u2019s AL, heck, that might even get you a first-round bye. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would have been nice to sweep; there’s no doubt,\u201d Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said afterward because, like, what else could he say? \u201cWinning each series is the goal, always has been the goal. We\u2019ve got a tough series ahead of us. So, it was really important to start this homestand by winning the series.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

All of this is true. It also highlights the Rangers\u2019 real challenge going forward. Believing they can win series after series for the next three weeks requires some suspension of disbelief in the first place, considering the Rangers haven\u2019t won more than four series in a row this year. \u00a0<\/p>\n

And the deeper you dig, the harder it is to believe. Done with the A\u2019s, the Rangers now host Tampa Bay, which has the best record in the AL, for four games. The Rays, who beat the Rangers twice in three games in July in Florida, play very much like Milwaukee, which just won two of three along the shores of Lake Michigan last week. The Brewers nearly ran the Rangers straight out of Wisconsin with their small-ball execution. Tampa Bay does it all just as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After that, the home-field edge<\/a> evaporates, with the final 18 games split evenly between Globe Life Field and elsewhere. And if there are two things this team has not done well at all this year, it\u2019s beat winning teams and win road games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n

The Rangers are 26-35 (.426) against teams at .500 or better. They are 30-41 (.431) on the road. Both winning percentages rank in the bottom half of the league. This has all taken a decided turn for the worse since July 1, which was the last time the Rangers won either a road series or one against a team at .500 or better. Both came when they took two of three from Cleveland, which currently holds the AL\u2019s third wild card spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since then, the record splits have been abysmal: 5-13 against winning teams, 6-17 on the road. It\u2019s been both baffling and astonishing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, to be fair, to make these expanded playoffs, you don\u2019t necessarily have to be very good at either, but you can\u2019t stink at both. And that\u2019s where the Rangers are at the moment. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust me, I’m very aware of where we’re at with it, and that’s why I\u2019m frustrated,\u201d Schumaker said. \u201cThe whole goal, since I was a player, was to be really good at home and at least .500 on the road and we have just failed at doing that. But we\u2019ve still got games on the road and need to figure it out. It\u2019s part of our jobs as managers and coaches. We\u2019ve gone over this, and it keeps all of us up at night.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, the cure for sleeplessness doesn\u2019t have to involve trazodone. The first 140 games are done and the Rangers haven\u2019t found answers in them anyway. All that matters is the next 22 games. Or, better yet: the next seven series. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, the numbers suck,\u201d Jake Burger said. \u201cBut it’s a clean slate as far as we’re concerned right now. Moving forward, we\u2019ve got 22 games. It\u2019s a sprint now. A playoff mentality. There are no throwaway games, but you aren\u2019t thinking about the playoffs in the middle of June. So, I think that\u2019s what we\u2019ve got to have is a playoff mentality. If we win each series, we\u2019re in a pretty good spot.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

Just like the playoffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But also, just like the playoffs, to win series, you\u2019ve got to beat good teams. And you\u2019ve got to win on the road. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Now is the Rangers\u2019 last chance to prove they can do that.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARLINGTON, TEXAS – SEPTEMBER 02: Ezequiel Duran #20 of the Texas Rangers celebrates following a home run against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2393],"tags":[4805,5,4,149,1567,69,3240,87965,87966,89173,88704],"class_list":["post-795622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas-rangers","tag-article","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-rangers","tag-texas","tag-texas-rangers","tag-texasrangers","tag-tp-jake-burger","tag-tp-skip-schumaker","tag-tp-arlington","tag-tp-globe-life-field"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117206829576794861","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795622","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=795622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}