With the offseason underway, the Rangers’ 2026 player reviews keep rolling on, and Sam Haggerty’s season is easy to sum up: it never got off the ground.
Texas brought Haggerty back on a $1.25 million deal after he had been released by Seattle and joined the club on a minor league contract in 2025. He had earned a look the year before, getting called up in May and filling a needed spot as a right-handed outfield bat. The expectation was that he could serve that same purpose in 2026.
The contract situation already hinted at how the Rangers viewed him. Haggerty was in his final year of arbitration eligibility, and rather than get a standard early-January deal done, Texas announced his contract on the day of the non-tender deadline.
That suggested the club was willing to keep him at its number - or move on entirely instead of risking a bigger arbitration award. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
And while Haggerty is technically a switch-hitter, his splits have never looked like a perfect fit for that label. For his career, he has a 765 OPS against left-handed pitchers and a 548 OPS against right-handed pitchers, the kind of split that makes you wonder if one side of the plate would serve him better than both.
In 2026, none of it mattered much because the production just wasn’t there. Haggerty hit .159/.213/.182 across 47 plate appearances in 35 games. That’s rough no matter how you slice it.
That line also sent the search for ugly Rangers offense down a rabbit hole. A sub-400 OPS in at least 45 plate appearances is hard to do, but not impossible.
The 2024 club had two such cases: Davis Wendzel at 397 and Andrew Knizner at 394. Knizner reached that mark in 93 plate appearances, which is almost impressive in its own bleak way.
Curtis Terry’s 279 OPS in 48 plate appearances in 2021 still stands as the lowest for any Rangers hitter with at least 45 plate appearances since 1973, and the lowest overall if pitchers are excluded. Robinson Chirinos in 2020, Hanser Alberto in 2016, Mike Carp in 2014 and Cristian Guzman in 2010 are the other 21st-century names on that list.
Haggerty’s season may be remembered even more for how it ended. He went on bereavement leave on June 1, then was designated for assignment a few days after returning. Bad timing, and not much of a runway beyond that.
There’s also the uniform angle. Haggerty wore No. 0, which puts him in a tiny group in Rangers history alongside Al Oliver, Oddibe McDowell and Junior Ortiz.
Not every player can pull that number off, either. A 0 needs personality. It needs some juice.
Al Oliver and Oddibe McDowell qualify. Junior Ortiz gets a pass as an anonymous backup catcher.
Haggerty, as a bench piece who could move around the infield and outfield, fit the mold in theory. But in 2026, he was basically a platoon left fielder, and that doesn’t carry enough flair for No.
Among current Rangers on the 40-man roster, Alejandro Osuna and Cody Freeman would be strong candidates for it. One of them, apparently, should be thinking about a number change for 2027.
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