The Texas Rangers are heading into a third straight October on the outside looking in, and the mess starts with the man making the roster calls. For all the frustration spread across the organization, president of baseball operations Chris Young is the one who has to own the pitching collapse that helped sink the season.
There’s no shortage of outside factors, including the tight wallet of Ray Davis and his ownership group. But the Rangers still spent the year living with the consequences of Young’s biggest moves, and both of them came back to bite them.
MacKenzie Gore arrived as the headline offseason pickup, while Chase Silseth was the trade deadline swing. Neither one delivered when Texas needed it most.
Young paid a steep price for Gore, sending five of the organization’s most promising farmhands to Washington. The arm is real, the stuff is loud, and there was one strong stretch early in 2025 that earned him an All-Star nod.
After that, though, the production fell off a cliff. He was inconsistent, shaky in traffic, and far too often unable to get through the kind of outing a contender needs in September.
That showed up again in the finale that the Rangers had to win. Gore allowed a run in 2.1 innings and didn’t record a strikeout.
He finished the year with a 4.58 ERA, a 1.34 WHIP and 1,0 bWAR. That 4.58 ERA was the worst of his career, and it fit the larger pattern: Texas could never trust what it was getting from him from one start to the next.
Once Gore was lifted after only 25 pitches, Silseth took over and immediately got burned. Twins slugger Josh Bell launched a two-run homer, and just like that the Rangers were down 3-1. Silseth took the loss.
His stint in Texas was rough across the board. He posted a 5.31 ERA in 20.1 innings with a 1.67 WHIP and a -0.2 bWAR, while walking 13 batters. It would be a small surprise if he’s back next season.
By the time Sunday’s game ended, the Rangers’ fate had already been sealed elsewhere, with the Astros rolling over the lowly A’s to win the division. Still, the final day served as a fitting snapshot of how quickly the season unraveled: three innings, two big additions, and both of them flaming out at the worst possible moment.
That’s what makes the bigger picture so hard to ignore. Texas had already drained much of its farm system trying to stay in the race, and Young doubled down by turning the remaining pieces into Gore. Then at the deadline, instead of clearly buying or selling, he split the difference and made Silseth - a pitcher whose biggest selling point was team control - the centerpiece.
For a club that had spent years trying to compete, the result was an average-to-below-average team that never found its way back to October. The 2023 World Series run bought some time, but that grace period is over now. The Rangers are out again, and the spotlight is on the man at the top.
In Other News...
Skip Schumaker Gave Rangers Fans A Blunt Reason For Missing Out
The Rangers third straight October absence came down to the kind of shortcomings that tend to linger all season, and Skip Schumaker did not try to soften them. After Texas fell to the Twins on the final day of the 2026 season, the manager pointed to two familiar problems that kept the club from getting where it wanted to go: trouble away from home and an inability to stack up consistently against winning teams.
Now the focus shifts to an offseason that already has plenty of weight to it. Texas will have important decisions to make in the coming months, but the timetable could get murky if a new collective bargaining agreement is not in place by Dec. 1, leaving the front office to sort out its next steps while the larger picture hangs in the balance. [Read more 🡒]
Rangers Finale Captured Why This Team Could Not Finish The Job
For much of the 2026 season, the Rangers kept finding a way to stay in the race even as the roster situation kept getting harder to manage. The rotation was forced to deal with physical problems, the bullpen absorbed more work than it could comfortably handle, and the lineup spent too many stretches without some of its key bats. Even with those issues, Texas stayed competitive deep into the year and gave itself a chance to make a push.
What kept showing up, though, was the gap between hanging around and actually taking control of the division. The Rangers were resilient enough to remain relevant, but not quite complete enough to finish the job when the season reached its final stretch. In a year defined by survival as much as production, that edge was often enough to keep the conversation going, but not enough to turn a hard-fought campaign into a division-winning one. [Read more 🡒]
Corey Seager Just Put The Rangers In A Brutal Spot
Corey Seagers final week of the 2026 season was a rough one, and it landed at an awkward time for a Rangers team still trying to sort out what comes next. He went 3-for-24 with no walks and nine strikeouts, a reminder that even with some improvement over the last two months, there has been very little easy confidence in his bat or his availability since 2023.
The bigger issue in Texas is that the conversation around Seager is no longer just about whether he can bounce back. The Rangers are reportedly weighing trade possibilities, even with his 10-5 no-trade exemption in play, and that puts the front office in a tricky spot as it keeps talking through his future with the club. For a team that has already invested plenty in him, the next decision could shape much more than just the lineup card. [Read more 🡒]