Texas Rangers President of Baseball Operations Chris Young responds to a question from the media during their season ending press conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington, September 28, 2026. Manager Skip Schumaker is seated, left. The Rangers failed to make the playoffs.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
ARLINGTON — On Monday afternoon, the faintest odor of raw sewage drifted through the tunnels of Globe Life Field. Maybe it was the leftovers from a sold-out weekend of Savannah Bananas shtick.
Or maybe, you know, it was just the leftovers from a rancid season.
With no postseason for which to prepare for the third straight year, the Rangers’ front office gathered the media together not to praise the season, but to bury it. And, boy, did they. In a 40-minute presser, President of Baseball Operations Chris Young used lots of roster rebuild-coded words.
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“It’s going to be very important in goals of ours to really address the makeup of this team in terms of health, reliability and dependability,” Young said. “We need to get younger. We need to get more athletic. We need to be more dynamic. And those are going to be offseason goals of ours that we are going to explore and find out how we can improve this roster from that standpoint and put a team together that our fans deserve.”
There are a lot of holes to fill. Given whatever the Rangers’ financial situation is this offseason — and there is no word on if owner Ray Davis is willing to expand the payroll – it presents a challenge that might last longer than a traditional offseason to fix. Good thing they may have a lot longer to think about.
And that was just his opening statement.
He saved the kicker for last.
About another shortcoming, the team’s profound road struggles on the road, he actually invoked a lack of “toughness,” too. Mind you, he wasn’t questioning his players’ physical toughness, but rather a mindset. Think “grit,” another word he used. Still, “toughness” is a provocative word. Not necessarily inaccurate, but still provocative and challenging. Something for the front office and the roster to chew on this winter.
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Road issues have been a hallmark of this club for a decade, but spending on the current roster began five years ago when the team started shelling out money for big free agents. Since then? The Rangers rank 23rd in the majors in road winning percentage at .435. This year, in particular: 23rd at .432. It’s the only thing that’s been consistent about the Rangers — save for that magical stretch in October of 2023 — over the last five years.
“I think it’s really a determination of the intangibles of the players that we choose, the toughness and the grit,” he said. “When you are on the road, it takes a grit and a toughness to go into an opposing city and have that mindset. And frankly, I don’t think we’ve exuded enough of it the last several seasons when we have not been a good road team. There are some things that we need to change in terms of bringing out that grit and toughness.”
He doubled down on it when the words were brought back up.
“You can’t be as far under .500 on the road as we were and say that we were as tough as we needed to be. There were times where the team showed great fight and great resilience, but the consistency of it wasn’t to the level that was needed for us to be a playoff team, and that’s why that’s just very honest.”
He wasn’t the only one.
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From manager Skip Schumaker: “We need to figure out how to get better playing teams on the road. It’s a mental toughness/mindset going into someone else’s stadium where you need to win a series.”
The Rangers haven’t done the things to win close games on the road. Didn’t run aggressively. Some guys were tentative; some guys were managing health situations. More specifically: Evan Carter didn’t run (or reach base) enough; Corey Seager, Wyatt Langford and Josh Jung, to name three, weren’t very aggressive because their bodies wouldn’t allow it.
The perfect example: Back in June, Seager, returning from a back issue, didn’t push himself going from first on a Brandon Nimmo double. He was late to see he was being waved to score. He slid into home safe but ended up with a concussion and missed two more weeks.
Young suggested all of that has to change. Now, self-awareness is a great trait. But it’s one thing to understand the issue; another to actually address it.
Is there flexibility to the roster? Not if the Rangers don’t have increased resources. Speaking of needing to get younger, Jacob deGrom (39 next year), Nathan Eovaldi (37) and Seager (33) will make $92 million between them. That’s equal to about half of the Rangers’ total salaries for 2026.
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Can they get more dependable? Seager missed 60 games, Josh Jung 58 and Wyatt Langford 52 this year. Over a three-year period, they’ve each missed more than 100. They are supposed to be core pieces.
Can they get younger? The Rangers counted on four players ages 26 or younger in 2026 — Langford, Carter, Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker. None of them took steps forward, though Rocker did log almost 150 innings. And it seemed like Young was looking in the direction of Carter and Langford when he talked about the need to create competition.
“I think there’s a level of performance and a step we expected all of those guys to take that maybe we didn’t quite see and realize,” Young said. “The opportunity to be a major league player does not last forever, and next year will be a big year for all of these players.”
With the specter of a work stoppage looming this winter, it only makes planning to address all of these pretty fundamental issues that much more challenging.
On that front, though, Young said he was up for the challenge.
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“Accountability starts with me,” he said. “Certainly, I am the one responsible for putting this roster together. We did our best over the course of the year, but ultimately it wasn’t good enough to have to overcome some of the things, some of the shortcomings, and that’s on me. Our job is tirelessly to look for ways to upgrade the roster.”
And if there’s one thing he’s sure of, it’s that he’s got the toughness, mindset and grit to do whatever it takes to keep the Bananas from having the last sellout of the season next year.
Texas Rangers Manager Skip Schumaker (seated, left) President of Baseball Operations Chris Young (center) and General Manager Ross Fenstermaker right) answered questions from the media during their season ending press conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington, September 28, 2026. The Rangers failed to make the playoffs.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
Texas Rangers President of Baseball Operations Chris Young (center) and General Manager Ross Fenstermaker (right) listens to Manager Skip Schumaker respond to a question from the media during their season ending press conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington, September 28, 2026. The Rangers failed to make the playoffs.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
Texas Rangers Manager Skip Schumaker responded to a question from the media during their season ending press conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington, September 28, 2026. The Rangers failed to make the playoffs.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
Texas Rangers General Manager Ross Fenstermaker responded to questions from the media during their season ending press conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington, September 28, 2026. The Rangers failed to make the playoffs.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
Texas Rangers General Manager Ross Fenstermaker responds to questions from the media during their season ending press conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington, September 28, 2026. The Rangers failed to make the playoffs.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
Texas Rangers President of Baseball Operations Chris Young answered questions from the media during their season ending press conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington, September 28, 2026. The Rangers failed to make the playoffs.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
Texas Rangers Manager Skip Schumaker answers a question from the media during their season ending press conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington, September 28, 2026. The Rangers failed to make the playoffs.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
Texas Rangers Manager Skip Schumaker (left) listens to President of Baseball Operations Chris Young answer questions from the media during their season ending press conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington, September 28, 2026. The Rangers failed to make the playoffs.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
Texas Rangers President of Baseball Operations Chris Young responds to a question from the media during their season ending press conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington, September 28, 2026. Manager Skip Schumaker is seated, left. The Rangers failed to make the playoffs.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News
Texas Rangers Manager Skip Schumaker (left) President of Baseball Operations Chris Young (center) and General Manager Ross Fenstermaker answered questions from the media during their season ending press conference at Globe Life Field in Arlington, September 28, 2026. The Rangers failed to make the playoffs.
Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News