(This is rambling, diffuse and solipsistic and probably shouldn’t have been sent, but hey, it’s an off-day for the minors.)
In early June, Texas signed OF Jarred Kelenic, who’d become a free agent after being outrighted by the White Sox. He’d batted an unremarkable .202/.346/.464 in AAA; his MLB line was .211/.283/.374 in 1,547 plate appearances. In Round Rock, he suddenly channeled Babe Ruth, hitting .340/.431/.620. I was soon receiving emails about the possibility of him joining Texas. On the 18th I wrote:
As a bench player, Kelenic probably doesn’t help or hurt the team relative to other options. If he’s playing often, I’m worried… I’ve found discussions of how Kelenic’s MLB Statcast data has been promising, and he’s had dreadful luck in terms of expected average and slugging versus actual results. Kelenic also turns 27 next month and has over 1,500 MLB plate appearances. At some point, “xBA” and “xSLG” don’t matter. There’s no mean to regress to. His actual performance is the mean. Could Texas get more out of him? Possibly. Enough to meaningfully improve the team’s fortunes? I doubt it. Giving Kelenic a significant role feels desperate. But then, the Rangers are 35-38, contending only because so many AL clubs are playing at the same level.
The next day, Texas purchased his contract. Manager Skip Schumaker was disconcertingly effusive about the move*, reminding me of some of former manager Chris Woodward’s extravagant predictions**. The suggestion was he’d be the fat side of a platoon. Kelenic received a feature story in the Dallas Morning News containing verbs like “spark” and “boost.” All this for a replacement-level, 85 OPS+ hitter who had passed through waivers twice in seven months.
This episode changed me. To be more embarrassingly precise, the idea that Kelenic could boost the Texas offense broke my brain for a little while. A 26-year-old has a strong two weeks in the hothouse PCL and now he’s part of the solution? Really? Does this sound like a contending team? Didn’t we endure something similar with Rowdy Tellez?
Ultimately, the talk was just that. Kelenic didn’t play much and was designated for assignment just ten days later.
About the same time, my brain healed and I gained clarity. I’d spent all of 2025 and a decent chunk of 2026 watching with ever-increasing agitation what I truly believed was an underperforming squad. No longer. The Rangers were average. They might make the postseason, they might not, but regardless, they were average. I accepted that.
I haven’t reduced my watching and listening. I haven’t lost any enthusiasm for my writing. I haven’t become any less of a fan or disassociated. No, I just became a Stoic. In the past two months, both the Rangers and my emotions have hovered within a few games of .500. (Also, at the risk of being Abe Simpson yelling at a cloud, I also don’t find this playoff hunt emotionally compelling. Assuming the White Sox maintain some distance, we have eight teams, all but one below .500 and all but one with a negative run differential, fighting for two playoffs spots. The battles feel random, decided by coin flips.)
Alas, my newfound clarity did not aid my trade-deadline outlook. Given my opinion of the club, selling probably made the most sense. But at the same time, the club was still built for the moment. DeGrom, Eovaldi, Pederson and Nimmo were “win-now” players. Goodness knows the Gore trade was a “win-now” move. Annoyingly, I could argue for either path plus a third. I wrote this the morning after the deadline:
I emailed this to a reader while yesterday was still young: “There’s an argument for standing pat. It’s possible that playing mostly .500 ball but reeling off nine wins in 12 somewhere in there could be enough to get in. It’s such a bland division. That’s an ugly sell as a GM because it’s so passive, though.” I can’t imagine passivity was Texas’s strategy yesterday, but nevertheless the deadline passed with only one deal of modest consequence.
Writing the team off is easy, especially after last night’s face-plant against the remnants of the Giants, but the Rangers are genuinely still in it. I say that not as a message of hope but as observation of fact. Maybe Bradford and Montgomery will help. Maybe a healthy Leiter will pitch at his best. Maybe Seager will put the team on his back. And maybe none of these happen and the Rangers go on a heater anyway. The AL feels very random, and some random team is going to hit their number on the roulette wheel. Could be Texas.
After the trade deadline, Texas was 55-58, 2.5 games out of 1st in the division and two behind the final wild card. Since then, the Rangers are 6-6 including a seemingly ruinous 2-5 road trip against baseball’s two worst teams, yet they’ve gained half a game in the division and eliminated the entire wild-card deficit. Here’s to passivity!
If the Rangers do reach the postseason, maybe we’ll see some stories about finally playing up to expectations or perseverance or (God forbid) destiny. No. They’re an average club. Even if they do some damage in October, which is quite possible given the nature of baseball plus the loopy playoff format***, they’re average.
The farm might be slightly better than a few months ago, but any major offseason upgrades to the parent club will have to include major prospects, some you might personally consider untouchable. The alternative is spending money.
If the message from ownership is “no,” I think the message from the front office should be likewise. The idea of another needle-threading, fringe-of-contention regular season is deeply unpalatable. I’d be inclined at that point to tell deGrom “we appreciate your faith in your teammates, but you need to think about what kind of team you’d like to pitch for in your waning days. Probably not the ’27 Rangers.” It doesn’t have to a be a strip-to-the-studs rebuild, but it will be time to fully conclude this version of the club.
Between now and my imaginary offseason conversation with deGrom, I hope the Rangers play well. But I’m not going to get too emotional about it.
* Of course, Schumaker had to speak favorably of him. Any manager would. I would, too. And to be clear, I’m happy to have Kelenic around and think he’s a perfectly decent 5th OF and righty bench bat. He’ll make bank in Japan or Korea next year.
** In 2019, Woodward suggested Matt Davidson could be one of the league’s best right-handed hitters in three or four years. Davidson was already 28 and had been non-tendered by the White Sox over the winter. A year later, Woodward offered that Leody Taveras might hit 30-35 homers. I just think statements like that at best set unfair expectations for the players and at worst call into question the judgment of the speaker. I don’t think Schumaker’s statements reached even close to the level of Woodward’s, but they did give me pause.
*** Having three divisions but just two byes and no-reseeding after the first round leads to weird and unfair matchups. There’s a good chance at least one wild card will have a better record than a division winner, and indeed, that’s happened in six of eight previous league-seasons under the current format. What that means is, on six of eight occasions, the #5 seed has faced a tougher first-round opponent than the #6 seed, and the #1 seed has faced the possibility of a tougher first-round opponent than the #2 seed. As it stands, one among Houston, Chicago and the final wild card will be in the ALCS, but two of Tampa Bay, New York and Boston won’t.
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