Texas Rangers 2025 preview
We really should have seen the outcome of 2024 coming for the Texas Rangers. When Bruce Bochy was manager of the San Francisco Giants, they were an even-year team, winning the World Series in 2010, 2012, and 2014. In Bochy’s first season with the Rangers, he was the 2023 World Series champion. Obviously, the Rangers are going to be an odd-year team on his watch.
Sarcasm aside, it was a really disappointing ‘24 campaign for the Rangers. They scored nearly 200 fewer runs, gave up 22 more, and needed to use 57 different players a year after using just 48 of them. The irony is that Texas was just 14-22 in one-run games during their World Series season and went 26-20 en route to their third-place finish, landing 10.5 games out of first.
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Injuries definitely played a part, but a lot of players simply took a step back. You often hear about the notion of a World Series hangover, which is due to a variety of factors. In my mind, I think of it as players playing an extra month’s worth of very high-leverage games and that takes a toll. The offseason in baseball is short to begin with and pitchers may not recover as quickly. Hitters may not recover as quickly. Some key components do indeed leave via free agency. That wasn’t really the case for Texas, though, aside from Jordan Montgomery and a few bench pieces.
Quite simply, it was a down year. A lot of things go right in a championship season. Guys overperform their baselines. When they return, you get something like what we got with the Rangers. Also, if we’re being honest in our assessment, the World Series season came out of nowhere. It was the first winning season for Texas since 2016. And they’ve thrown a ton of money at their problems in hopes of righting the ship.
Now they’ll have to right the ship to get back into contention and be back in the AL West title picture.
2025 Texas Rangers Odds
(odds from DraftKings as of Feb. 24)
World Series: +2500
AL Pennant: +1000
AL West: +225
Win Total: 85.5 (-110/-110)
Make Playoffs: Yes -125 / No +105
Texas Rangers Preview: Offense
A major drop in offensive production is why the Rangers had the season that they had. The 2023 Rangers slashed .263/.337/.452 with a .340 wOBA and a 116 wRC+. They were fourth in homers, second in batting average, third in OBP, third in SLG, third in wOBA, and third in wRC+.
The 2024 Rangers slashed .238/.305/.380 with a .300 wOBA and a 95 wRC+. They were 21st in batting average, 20th in OBP, 23rd in SLG, 23rd in wOBA, and 22nd in wRC+. Only the Rays had bigger ranking drops in most of those offensive categories. What led to such a dramatic decrease in numbers? Well, it’s a bit of a difficult thing to pinpoint, but there are a few areas of concern, especially when you consider that the Rangers had a lot of the same faces in their lineup last season that they had during their championship season.
Corey Seager still had an excellent season with a 140 wRC+, but that was 31 points lower than what he had in 2023. He went from a .340 BABIP to a .291 BABIP, so that was the biggest difference. His contact authority remained quite elite and his actual SLG of .512 came with a xSLG of .561, so he got a bit unlucky overall.
I can’t say the same for some of the other big droppers. The most notable ones are Marcus Semien and Adolis Garcia. Semien posted just a 99 wRC+, as he ran a .250 BABIP a year removed from a 126 wRC+ and a .291 BABIP. Semien went from 29 homers to 23 and had a sub-.400 SLG for the first time in a non-COVID season since 2018 with the A’s. He didn’t strike out any more often and actually walked a little bit less, but his poor contact authority caught up with him after an overachieving season. He hit more ground balls, too.
Semien’s low bat speed (15th percentile) and low contact metrics (32nd percentile in average exit velo, 30th in Barrel%, and 26th in Hard Hit%) from 2023 caught up to him in 2024 when he actually fell to the 19th percentile in average exit velo and 22nd in Hard Hit%. His best offensive attribute is that he doesn’t strike out and doesn’t chase a lot, but his good offensive seasons, especially the 2021 outlier with 45 homers, were bound to regress at some point.
With Semien at the top of the order, a down offensive season impacts everybody. The massive drop from Garcia was also another big factor. He scored 40 fewer runs, hit 14 fewer homers, and saw significant decreases across the board. The patience he exhibited in 2023 disappeared, as his Chase Rate climbed and his BB% declined. He was hurt late in the season, so we might get a bounce back. Projection systems are bullish on one.
Semien and Garcia were the two biggest culprits. Seager not being superhuman was a little more penal because of what happened to those two. But, Josh Jung only played 46 games, so that hurt. Mitch Garver’s bat was gone. Wyatt Langford basically made up for the fall from grace out of Evan Carter.
Langford will be part of the crew that needs to step up. Nathaniel Lowe was traded to the Nationals and he’s been a terrific MLB hitter with a career 122 wRC+. His four seasons in Texas finished 114, 143, 117, and 121 in that department, so he was no worse than 14% above league average.
To find more power, the Rangers picked up Joc Pederson and Jake Burger, who combined for 62 homers last season. Burger’s numbers aren’t that far off of Lowe’s and Pederson is an excellent platoon bat on the fat side (against RHP). This offense should perk up with better health. Nearly everybody in the starting lineup is projected for a wRC+ over 100.
Texas Rangers Preview: Pitching
I’ll preface my pitching breakdown by talking about how worried I am with the age of this staff. Based on Baseball-Reference’s weighted pitchers’ average age, the Rangers were the oldest staff in baseball last year at 31.7 years. They’re not any younger this season. The projected starting rotation has four guys on the wrong side of 30 and two on the wrong side of 35. The rebuilt bullpen has five guys 34+, including 41-year-old Jesse Chavez, who is in camp on a minor league deal.
Free agent Andrew Heaney and Nathan Eovaldi were the only two starters to make at least 20 starts for Texas last season. They were also the only two pitchers to have over 1.9 fWAR. And the two relievers with 1.9 fWAR, Kirby Yates and David Robertson, are both gone, too. To be fair, Jacob deGrom would have been the best pitcher on the team if healthy and he’s expected to be good to go at the start of the season.
deGrom had three starts last season and has made nine starts for the Rangers over the last two seasons. He’s made a total of 35 starts in the last four seasons. Whenever he’s out there, he’s likely to be extremely good, but the Rangers are probably mistaken to expect too much. He hasn’t thrown more than 92 innings in a season since 2019 and he’ll turn 37 in June.
Nothing against Eovaldi, who was great last season with a 3.80 ERA, 3.91 xERA, and a 3.83 FIP in 170.2 innings of work, but he’s coming off of his highest workload since 2021 and just turned 35. He’s a very solid pitcher and the Rangers have really harnessed his potential well, but he isn’t an ace. deGrom needs to be that guy for the Rangers to reach their goals and objectives.
Jon Gray was limited to 102.2 innings and hasn’t been all that great the last two seasons. There was some talk early in Spring Training of converting him to a reliever. I’m not sure I love that with a declining K%, but maybe he can find more whiffs in short bursts. Tyler Mahle has made eight starts over the last two seasons, first because of Tommy John surgery and second because of a shoulder injury.
This is shaping up for Cody Bradford to have to sustain what he did over 76.1 innings last season with a 3.54 ERA, 3.54 xERA, and a 3.59 FIP. I’ll talk more about him in a minute. The other options are Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter, who both pitched at the MLB level last season and are former top-five picks with big upside. Rocker has already had Tommy John. Leiter has not fared well in the minors, but the Texas League and the Pacific Coast League are not fun places to pitch.
The bullpen features five free agents and a trade acquisition in Robert Garcia, who came over in the Lowe deal. It’s an underwhelming group for me, though the Rangers finished 26th in relief ERA and FIP last season, so it doesn’t take much to improve.
Texas Rangers Player To Watch
SP Cody Bradford
As promised, more on Bradford, who looks like the only lefty in this rotation for the foreseeable future. He was not very good over 56 MLB innings in 2023, but his strong K/BB numbers have always given him a ceiling as a prospect. Last season, he was able to induce a very good 34.8% Hard Hit% and worked in a curveball that kept hitters a little more off-balance.
Bradford’s best pitch was his fastball, which graded 10.8 runs above average per Statcast. I’m a little leery of low-velocity fastball guys who are so dependent on the pitch because their margin for error is quite a bit lower. As I mentioned, pitching in the Texas League and the PCL are not enjoyable, but Bradford’s penchant for being around the plate, plus a low-velo heater led to a lot of home runs. He had a 14.1% HR/FB% in those 56 MLB innings two years ago but cut it to 10.2% this past season. I don’t know that last season’s returns are repeatable and a slew of rotation injuries could make regression from Bradford hurt more.
Texas Rangers Season Win Total Odds & Prediction
I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m not a big fan of the way that the Rangers are constructed. It is entirely possible that Langford becomes a star, but I don’t expect repeats of 2023 for Seager, Semien, and Garcia and I could even see all three close to their 2024 numbers in the aggregate. With the concerns that I have about the pitching staff, that’s not going to be good enough.
That being said, the way I’d attack the Rangers is No (+105) to Make The Playoffs or the best number you can find in the market. There’s a chance that this team does get to around 85ish wins or whatever. I don’t think that they do, but I like that plus-money price because they could get Over this number and still come up short. There is also the chance that they win the AL West and get in that way while still staying Under, as I’m not a huge fan of either the Astros or the Mariners.
I just don’t see the Rangers staying healthy. Rocker, Bradford, Langford, and Carter might be enough to get them over the hump, but that’s asking for a lot of things to go right.
Strong Lean: Under 85.5; Pick: No (+105) to Make The Playoffs
