Introduction to the Texas Rangers’ Current Situation
Theoretically, yes, it could’ve gone worse. The Texas Rangers finished a six-game week against the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Toronto Blue Jays with a 2-4 record, three late-game meltdowns, two position players injured and one big bad blowout loss.
The exact details pale in comparison to what they’ve created. The Rangers are 5-11 since the July 31 trade deadline and must now jump three teams to clinch an American League Wild Card berth with 37 games left to play. Don’t ask about the AL West.
Now that we’ve cheered you up, let’s dive into the week that was (and, OK, a little bit about the week that’s soon to be).
The Week Ahead May Decide the Season
Yes, yes, we know, every Rangers game is important from here on out. But, if you’ll allow us, these next seven might need to be starred, circled and highlighted for reasons of significance.
The Rangers play four games against the Kansas City Royals at Kaufman Stadium and three against the Cleveland Guardians at Globe Life Field between Monday and Sunday.
That stretch will have a significant say as to whether or not the Rangers will enter the regular season’s final month with a puncher’s chance to reach the playoffs. The Guardians, who are the first team out of the American League Wild Card race, are ahead of the Rangers by two games. The Royals are sandwiched between them and are one-and-a-half games up on Texas.
There are two scenarios here, one in which the Rangers win both series and potentially leapfrog both teams, and one in which the Rangers don’t perform and have an even larger hole to climb out of with even less time to do so.
“This next stretch of the season, we play some guys that we’ve got to beat, it’s as simple as that,” shortstop Corey Seager said Sunday. “We’ve got to come into Kansas City and try and play well.”
The Roller Coaster Never Ends
This time last week, if you remember from our last installment of “5 things,” the Rangers had a 22.5% chance to qualify for the postseason.
Well, to borrow a quote from former Texas first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, “we’re the Rangers and we’ve kind of got to do it the hard way.”
It sure ain’t the easy way. The Rangers now have an 11.4% chance to make the playoffs, according to FanGraphs’ model, and have less than a 1% chance to win the division.
It’s been a precipitous drop in less than a month’s time. The Rangers had a 51.4% chance to make the playoffs on July 27 and have seen that decline by 40% in three weeks. Their current odds are the second-lowest they’ve been all season. Only Saturday’s 8.8% chance was worse.
Autopsy of a Bad Bullpen Week
The Texas bullpen yielded an 8.74 ERA in six games against the Arizona Diamondbacks and Toronto Blue Jays. Only the Houston Astros were statistically worse in that span.
Texas Rangers pitcher Phil Maton watches a three-run home run by Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte clear the fence during the ninth inning of a baseball game at Globe Life Field on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025.
Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer
There are two ways to contextualize a week that included three straight games in which the bullpen blew a late lead. One way is that wear-and-tear for one of baseball’s oldest yet most effective bullpens more than three-quarters of the way through the season is not unexpected or out of the ordinary.
The second way relates back to the team’s singular largest weakness.
The offense has continued to give the bullpen — and, frankly, the rotation as well — a minuscule margin of error to work with. It’s a simple formula: Good starting pitching plus an ineffective offense equals close games in which the Rangers are forced to use their best high-leverage arms in order to win. That, in turn, exposes the bullpen to overuse, overexposure and a greater risk of meltdowns.
The bullpen has logged the fourth-most high-leverage innings (128) in baseball this season and, since Aug. 1, their 16 1/3 high-leverage innings are the fifth-most. Each member of the Rangers’ late-game quintet — Hoby Milner, Shawn Armstrong, Danny Coulombe, Phil Maton and Robert Garcia — have pitched in at least seven games since the start of the month. Only six total relief pitchers in the American League had pitched in more games during that span before Sunday’s slate.
It’s the curse of a decent bullpen; sometimes the best-case scenario is that it isn’t needed.
OK, Well, What About the Offense?
Glad you asked.
The Rangers had to survive a slog of pitchers two weeks ago that included All-Star-caliber arms like Max Fried, Carlos Rodón, Zack Wheeler and Christopher Sanchez between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies. This is not to excuse the Rangers for the 1-5 record that they finished with against those two teams, but it is a reminder that good pitchers are hard to hit.
There were fewer excuses this week.
The Rangers lost two of three games and averaged just 4.3 runs per game against a Diamondbacks staff whose 4.58 ERA is the sixth-worst in baseball. In two losses to the Blue Jays, whose 4.35 ERA is the eighth-worst, they recorded just five hits in Friday’s 6-5 loss and scored only one run off a legitimate pitcher in Saturday’s 14-2 loss. Ironically, it was Toronto right-hander José Berríos — quite possibly the best starter that the Rangers faced last week — whom they had the most success against when they tagged him for 6 runs on 10 hits in Sunday’s 10-4 win.
Go figure.
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