On Friday at 10 a.m., Rangers fans can buy tickets for a Wild Card or American League Division Series game the team still hasn’t officially earned.
That kind of optimism fits this season. Texas is sitting in a real fight for first place in the American League Worst despite a record that ought to have them thinking about winter plans, and manager Skip Schumaker knows exactly why.
“The reality is that’s what the division is,” Schumaker said this week before the Rangers began their final home stand on Tuesday. “It’s a crazy year what this division looks like.”
And it really is. The division has two average clubs, one underachiever and two teams that have been flat-out bad. Texas has plenty to answer for, but the condition of the Astros, Angels, A’s and Mariners is not one of them.
“If you would have told me back in spring training that we’d be here with a chance to get in the playoffs,” Schumaker said, “I’d take it.”
The Rangers are still in the hunt because the American League’s gap between the good teams and the rest is huge, and because they’ve managed to stay alive in a season that keeps hovering around the same maddening place. On Thursday night, they blew what would have been a three-game sweep of the Red Sox in a 4-3 loss.
Trevor Story’s three-run homer in the eighth inning off All-Star reliever Jacob Latz stopped Texas from getting over .500 for the first time since Aug. 10.
Even so, the Rangers stayed in second place, one game behind Houston.
Three weeks ago, Schumaker said the division race would likely go down to the final week of the season. That still looks right, with this thing possibly coming down to Game 161 or 162.
Texas has spent so much of the year flirting with one game above .500 that it’s become its own weird storyline - frustrating, a little impressive, and, in its own way, encouraging. The Rangers haven’t quit. When a team is this average, that matters.
Schumaker pointed to a few reasons he believes Texas can finish strong enough to win the division. The Rangers had just beaten Boston in the first game of that series, and he noted, “We’ve won a lot of series in a row,” Schumaker said before the first game against Boston this week, a series the Rangers won.
“And we play really well at home. We have a lot more games at home than we do on the road.
Having [third baseman Josh Jung] has been huge. Having [pitcher Nathan Eovaldi] has been huge.”
That home-field stretch may be the biggest thing working in Texas’ favor. The Rangers have become genuinely good at home after years of struggling there. Their 42 home wins are tied for third-most in the American League.
In their first three seasons combined at Globe Life Mall, they went 76-116. That includes the 2020 season, when they played in front of cardboard cutouts because of COVID protocols.
Since the start of their World Series-winning season in 2023, they are 184-134 in Arlington.
Now they have seven of their last 10 games at home, starting with consecutive wins over Boston, and all three of their remaining series are against teams with losing records.
Nothing about this team feels safe, but the schedule gives them a real chance to finish the job and win this weak division.
Schumaker’s belief in the value of simply getting into the postseason isn’t theoretical. He lived it as a player from 2005 to 2015 with the Cardinals, Dodgers and Reds, and his own history gives him a sharp sense of what a late push can mean.
In 2006, his Cardinals lost their final regular-season game to finish 83-78, yet still won the NL Central because the Astros lost that same day. St. Louis then went on to win the World Series in five games over the heavily favored Detroit Tigers, and at the time they were the worst regular-season team ever to win it all.
Five years later, the Cardinals were 10 1/2 games behind the Braves for a Wild Card spot in late August. They caught fire, clinched on the final day of the regular season and finished with 90 wins.
That 2011 club was different from the 2006 group - better overall, but still needing the season’s final day to get in. And then, of course, Schumaker’s Cardinals won the World Series by beating the Rangers, one of the most painful endings a franchise or fan base can take.
So when Schumaker talks about a team hanging around long enough to get hot, he’s not guessing. He’s lived both versions of that story.
Rangers playoff tickets go on sale Friday morning.
In Other News...
Rangers Make A Pitching Choice That Says Plenty About This Finale
The Rangers are leaning on Cody Bradford for the series finale, and the assignment says plenty about how they want to navigate the end of this stretch. The left-hander will take the ball against Bostons Sonny Gray on extra rest, giving Texas a chance to get through a game that matters without overtaxing a pitching staff that has already had to be managed carefully.
Bradford has been held to limited innings in recent starts, so the Rangers are clearly prepared to monitor him closely and adjust on the fly if needed. With several bullpen options available behind him, Texas is trying to balance winning the finale with keeping enough arms fresh for the games ahead, a calculation that has become part of the rhythm this time of year. [Read more 🡒]
Rangers Have One Bullpen Problem They Must Fix For A Late Push
The Rangers have made a habit of turning late leads into wins, and the back end of the bullpen has been a big reason why. Jacob Latz has helped lock things down after the seventh inning, and Texas is 61-1 when it gets ahead at that point, a stat that says plenty about how hard this club has been to beat once it reaches the finish line.
The bigger concern has come earlier, in the middle innings, where the fifth through seventh have been a trouble spot for preserving those advantages. Recent upticks from Chase Silseth, Tyler Alexander and Robert Garcia offer at least a workable path forward, and Texas could use that kind of stability to bridge games more cleanly to Latz as it tries to make its late push. [Read more 🡒]
Rangers Turn Tense September Night Into A First-Place Push
A tense September night at Globe Life Field ended with the Rangers back at .500 and back in first place in the American League West, a place they have spent much of the month trying to claw toward. In a come-from-behind win over the Red Sox, Texas got enough from a pitching staff that was asked to keep piecing things together, with MacKenzie Gore and Nathan Eovaldi both covering multiple innings and Jakob Junis helping bridge the middle of the game.
The bigger takeaway for Texas is how much tighter the race has become as the final stretch approaches. The Rangers are tied for first in the division and still right in the mix in the Wild Card chase, which gives every late-inning at-bat a little extra weight. They were sharp with runners in scoring position against Boston, and now they carry that urgency into a September where one good night can change the picture quickly. [Read more 🡒]