The Texas Rangers may wind up sending only one player to the 2026 All-Star Game, with left-handed closer Jacob Latz the lone current representative for now. Injury replacements still haven’t been announced, but Latz has earned the nod with a season that has already stacked up 1.6 fWAR, a 1.71 ERA, a 28.3% strikeout rate, a 5.9% walk rate and 18 saves over 42 innings entering Sunday.
Even so, the Rangers may not be done producing All-Stars from this group. Wyatt Langford looks like the clearest candidate to break through next summer, provided he can finally put together a healthy first few months of the season. If that happens, there’s a strong chance he ends up making his first All-Star appearance at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
That idea would have looked even more obvious earlier this year if Langford hadn’t been sidelined for much of the season. He opened slowly, hitting .238/.274/.363 with a 76 wRC+ over 84 plate appearances through April 21 before going on the injured list with a right forearm flexor strain.
Once he returned on June 5, though, the bat came alive in a big way. Over 89 plate appearances after the injury, Langford hit .317/.371/.634 with a 179 wRC+, while adding seven home runs, five doubles and 16 RBI.
That surge pushed his season line to .278/.324/.500 with a 129 wRC+.
Then came another setback. Langford landed back on the IL on June 28 with a left hamstring strain and is expected to remain out until after the All-Star break, according to MLB.com's Kennedi Landry.
Texas has managed to stay afloat anyway, holding a two-game lead over the Houston Astros for the third American League Wild Card spot as of Sunday morning. The Rangers have also been dealing with other absences, with Corey Seager and Jack Leiter both on the IL.
The bigger picture with Langford is hard to miss. In 308 games since his MLB debut in 2024, he has already piled up 8.7 fWAR while hitting .251/.333/.434 with 46 home runs, 156 RBI and +34 Defensive Runs Saved. He’s gotten better at the plate in each of his three seasons, and at 24 years old, the talent is clearly there.
The one thing standing between Langford and that first All-Star trip appears to be his body. He played 134 games in each of the last two seasons, but he has already hit the IL twice this year, and that comes after three IL stints last year, all because of oblique injuries.
That makes 2027 a pivotal year for more than just his All-Star chances. It may also determine whether he spends the rest of his career trying to outrun the “injury-prone” label.
In Other News...
Corey Seager Just Raised The Stakes For The Rangers Future
Corey Seagers latest trip to the injured list has only sharpened the conversation around how long the Rangers can keep asking him to handle shortstop at a high level. The lower back issue he is dealing with is the newest chapter in a run of physical setbacks that has repeatedly interrupted his availability in recent seasons, and it comes at a time when his bat had already been in a tough stretch before he went down.
For Texas, the concern is bigger than one rehab timeline. Seager is still in treatment and not yet back to baseball activities, which leaves the club waiting on both his health and the broader question of how to protect one of its most important players over the life of a massive contract. Even without a formal decision on any position change, the Rangers are now staring at a future in which his durability may shape more than just the lineup card. [Read more 🡒]
Rangers May Be Near A Painful Chris Martin Decision
Chris Martin has been one of the more experienced arms in the Rangers bullpen, but this season has turned into a difficult reminder of how quickly relief pitching can change. The 40-year-old has struggled to find consistency, and the numbers have reflected it, with a 7.30 ERA, a 1.86 WHIP and a career-worst minus-0.4 bWAR. Add in the fact that he has spent time on the injured list multiple times over the past two seasons, and the Rangers are left weighing a familiar late-season question about whether a veteran can still hold a meaningful spot.
Emiliano Teodo is one of the names waiting in the wings at Triple-A Round Rock, and that only sharpens the conversation for Texas. The organization has younger options who could use big league exposure, while Martins role has become harder to justify as the season wears on. For a club trying to manage both present needs and future innings, the decision around a veteran reliever like Martin can become as much about timing as performance. [Read more 🡒]
Rangers Finally Delivered The Late Breakthrough Fans Have Been Waiting For
For six innings, the Rangers were stuck in a familiar kind of grind against Anaheim, with Jacob deGrom working through five innings before turning it over and Texas still needing a jolt to turn a 3-3 game in its favor. Justin Foscue supplied part of that spark with a solo homer to tie it in the seventh, then added an RBI as the lineup finally started to stack quality at-bats in the late innings.
The breakthrough came in the eighth, when Texas put together the kind of rally that has been missing at times this season and turned a tense tie into an 8-3 win. It was also the Rangers first victory over the Angels this year, a small but meaningful marker in a division race where every night like this can shift the conversation, especially when the club is trying to keep pace in the West. [Read more 🡒]