NEW YORK – This isn’t the worst stretch of Jake Burger’s career, but you can see it pretty clearly from here.  

Burger, who went hitless in three at-bats with runners in scoring position in the Rangers’ frustrating 7-4 loss to the New York Yankees Tuesday, entered Wednesday’s game with a .503 OPS over his last 25 games, a stretch that underscores a conundrum: his top tool is his power, but when he’s not slugging, he’s not just powerless, he’s also helpless. Burger’s not a good enough hitter to rap out hits with relative “misses.” He’s not disciplined enough at the plate to pile up a few walks while he works through the swing issue of the moment.  

He’s all or nothing.  

And right now, he’s mostly been nothing. 

“We need Jake to get going,” manger Skip Schumaker said Wednesday afternoon. “I mean, that’s it. It’s in there. I’ve seen it plenty of times. So, hopefully, he’s just in one of those little funks that when he comes out of it, he’ll get hot. And when he’s hot, he’s really hot, as you guys know.” 

Perhaps. But not as well as Schumaker does. The only 25-game stretch in Burger’s career statistically worse than the one he dragged into Wednesday was at the outset of the 2024 season when both Burger and Schumaker were in Miami. Over his first 31 games of that season, which included an IL stint and finding out that his daughter would be born with Down Syndrome, Burger slashed .164/.202/.267/.469. Schumaker’s counterpoint: he posted a .513 slugging percentage and an .841 OPS the rest of the way.  

Burger terrorized pitchers. Schumaker saw it.  

So, he’s giving him more chances to find that again.  

But with the rest of the offense, except Josh Jung, also struggling, the ugly stretch sticks out more, especially since the Rangers began the season with him as the cleanup hitter. Schumaker dropped him out of the fourth spot last week to perhaps allow him to take some pressure off himself. He’s continued to drop him. On Wednesday, he hit seventh for the first time this season. He’s really had no choice. Burger began the day Wednesday with a –0.3 WAR, according to Fangraphs. Among the 178 qualifying players, it was in the bottom 25. 

“I think I have a tendency when I am working on a new mechanic or a new idea to become stagnant with my move,” Burger said. “The majority of my home runs, even the one I hit in Detroit, there’s rhythm, and it whips through the zone, versus when I’m stagnant. My brain kind of locks and I lock up. I’m never going to be somebody like [Corey] Seager who can just go from a stand still. I’ve got to have a little bit of rhythm to make things more fluid. I’m a rhythm hitter and you can’t take that away from me. I need to have that in my move.”  

Whatever it takes. Because the Rangers are running out of time and answers.