ANAHEIM, Calif. — It has always felt like the Texas Rangers were just one win streak away. Such is the expectation for a team that went from a World Series championship in one season to a sub-.500 record the next. They should be better.
“We felt that way,” agreed manager Bruce Bochy. That’s what the organization has told itself so many times over the last season and a half. Winning is inevitable, even as it’s been elusive.
After all, the Rangers are not worse on paper than the club that won that aforementioned ring in 2023. But they’ve consistently fallen far below their lofty standards in the nearly two years since winning it all.
That long-awaited hot stretch has finally come to pass, as the Rangers have been baseball’s hottest team since the All-Star break. And, quite frankly, they’ve done it at the perfect time. Texas was 8 1/2 games out of the American League West lead and 3 1/2 games back of a wild-card spot on July 18 — firmly in sell territory amid a crowded field.
The Rangers are a half-game back of a playoff spot after their six-game winning streak was snapped Monday. As teams like the Tampa Bay Rays and Cleveland Guardians have faded, the Rangers have surged. And this has quite possibly shifted the front office’s outlook on whether 2025 is a year worth fighting for.
“(Chris Young), I feel like he’s always looking to make the team better,” said Rangers ace Nathan Eovaldi of the team’s top baseball operations executive. “It’s up to them with what they decide they want to do. I feel like with the guys we have right now, we have a good chance of going out there and proving a lot of people wrong.”
It’s been offense that’s gotten Texas out of its deep slump. The club installed former All-Star second baseman Bret Boone as hitting coach on May 5, replacing offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker, who was pivotal in the championship season. After struggling through June, the Rangers have the best run differential of any team in July, outscoring opponents 127-67. Pitching has kept Texas in the mix most of the season, with Jacob deGrom, Eovaldi and Tyler Mahle all pitching to sub-3.00 ERAs.
However, offense was always supposed to be this team’s identity, even when it wasn’t producing. The decline, across the board, was almost inexplicable last season. The Rangers had a clubhouse full of star players with track records — some of whom developed into stars during their playoff run.
Marcus Semien’s offensive production fell off in 2024, as he posted a sub-.700 OPS for the first time in a full season. Jonah Heim, who looked like a budding stalwart behind the plate, saw his OPS dip from .755 in 2023 to .602 last season. Adolis García, despite taking more at-bats in 2024 than the previous year, hit 14 fewer home runs.
Those players have also been the backbone of the resurgence. Semien hit a walkoff single on Saturday. Garcia has a .766 OPS over the last month, after entering that stretch with a .646 mark. Everyone’s stepping up.
“That’s life, it’s like that,” García said. “Sometimes you have to go through something that makes you get better. We never got frustrated, we focused on continuing to believe.”
If the Rangers do decide to add before Thursday’s 6 p.m. ET deadline, the competitive balance tax threshold could play a role in how they go about making deals. Their current payroll against the tax is estimated to be nearly $235 million according to FanGraphs, while the CBT threshold this season is $241 million.
The club paid the tax in 2023 and 2024, so it will likely be incentivized to stay below the line this year, particularly if it’s close.
What’s most important, however, isn’t what the Rangers add. It’s that they’ve likely removed the risk that Young will substantively subtract from the roster. They have a team capable of competing, with or without major additions.
“This is more who we think we are,” said Bochy. “It’s been a couple years where we didn’t have this consistency. But the last couple weeks, it was really critical that we would come out of it.”
For so long, this team couldn’t rely on the players it needed to rely on the most. But because of those players’ career track records, it also fostered the hope that, at some point, there’d be the course correction that’s currently taking place.
It would have been fair for Young to look at his roster, amid a second straight floundering season, and believe that this wasn’t working. The winning streak came just in the nick of time to avoid going down that path to a sell-off.
Perhaps the hot streak is masking some of the fundamental flaws of this roster. Or, perhaps, the resurgence has finally come. This stretch, at the very least, has allowed them the chance to find out.
“I think any team will say that when you’re hovering in that, ‘Are they in this?’ It was critical that we played well,” Bochy said. “Now the decisions from the front office, ownership, it makes it a lot easier for them.”
(Top photo of the Rangers celebrating a win over Atlanta on Saturday: Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
