Rangers First Weekend

The first week of Texas Rangers Spring Training is in the books. The record after the first three games is 2-1. Since that would project to a 108-54 regular season record, we’ll settle for that.

I never really did a full postmortem on the 2025 season. Never could get prepare my usual full evaluation and report cards for the team. Unfortunately it was too much like the previous year’s autopsy, and I just couldn’t get around to it.

There were certainly some good things to remember from last year. For example, the defense was outstanding. Texas set a single season MLB record with a .9911 team fielding percentage, committed only 51 errors during the season, and set another MLB record with 123 errorless games. Their pitching was extremely good. The team ERA was 3.49, best in baseball by a tenth of a run.

But the offense was pathetic The Rangers were 65-19 when they scored 4 or more runs, but they scored less than that in the other 78 games. In 35 games they scored one run or less. It was obvious that something had to change. In the off season they traded Marcus Semien and did not offer contracts to Jonah Heim and Adolis Garcia. Sadly, this trio had three of the ten lowest ops ratings in baseball last year (on base percentage average plus slugging percentage) Ouch. The rest of the lineup wasn’t exactly a Murderers Row, but most of them are back. Can we expect improvement from this group? We’ll soon begin to find out.

Bringing in Brandon Nimmo should help. His 25 homers and 92 RBI totals would have led the Rangers last year. And I like the trade for Mackenzie Gore. The All-Star lefty will add depth to a strong group of starting pitchers. The other off season acquisitions were primarily to rebuild the bullpen. I would have really liked to pick up another bat for the lineup, but ownership hasn’t loosened the purse strings yet. Maybe there will be a mid-season trade to add a hitter if Texas is in a buy mode when the time comes. Stay tuned for further developments.

I will be posing more questions and sharing more observations on our favorite team and the competition as we move closer to my favorite holiday - Opening Day!

That’s one man”s opinion - What’s yours?