Texas Rangers third baseman Josh Jung (6) jogs to the dugout during the seventh inning of the home opener at Globe Life Field, Friday, April 3, 2026, in Arlington. The Reds defeated the Rangers 5-3.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
The Rangers logged roughly 4,700 flight miles in the last week and a half, with trips to Los Angeles, then Sacramento, then Seattle and back to Dallas for their longest road trip of the season yet. They played 10 games in 10 days — four in a minor league stadium — and all but one or two required some level of high-leverage effort.
You’re probably tired of the West Coast game times.
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They’re probably, well, just tired.
The Rangers return Tuesday to Globe Life Field to start a nine-game homestand sandwiched between two off days. It’ll be music to their ears after a heck of a travel week.
Here are five things we learned from the last week:
Did the Rangers pass their first big test?
There’s an argument to be made that the last two-plus weeks provided the Rangers the toughest stretch of games that they’ll see this season. They played three at Globe Life Field vs. the Seattle Mariners, three against the back-to-back World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodgers Stadium, four against the Athletics at Sutter Health Park and three more against the Mariners at T-Mobile Park. Or, in other words, six games against a team that’s been their Kryptonite, three against a team that’s supposedly ruined baseball and four against a team whose minor league ballpark home can breed wacky outcomes.
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The result? A 7-6 record overall, a 4-6 record on the road and a tie atop the American League West standings.
Was it a triumph? Not necessarily. The Rangers could pinpoint a handful of those games — like the series opener in Los Angeles or a pair of one-run losses in Sacramento — and argue they might’ve left a few potential wins on the board. Was it a failure? Hardly. They swept the Mariners at home, played three close games against presumed title favorites on the road, split a series with the co-division leaders and managed to win a game in a ballpark where success has historically eluded them.
If grades are your thing, we’ll give the 13-game stretch a B-minus, and it could scale higher if it’s still early enough in the season to value process nearly as much as results.
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Josh Jung suddenly has a (fringe) player of the month candidacy
The third baseman hasn’t only played his way out of an early-season slump, but through the first two-and-a-half weeks of April, he’s been the club’s best statistical hitter. His 203 wRC+ since April 1, an advanced metric that measures a player’s offensive production, leads the Rangers and is the fifth-best in the league. His 0.7 WAR accumulated in that time, per FanGraphs, is tied for the ninth-most in the AL and tied for the most on the Rangers with right fielder Brandon Nimmo. His .385 batting average this month is second-best leaguewide. His 1.075 OPS ranks sixth. His strikeout rate and walk rate are each significantly better than his career averages.
It’s decent work for a guy whose status as an everyday player was threatened less than three weeks ago. It’s a boon for the Rangers, too, if Jung can remain a plus hitter and in the lineup regularly. The Rangers can then continue to use utility infielder Ezequiel Duran, who’d eaten into some of Jung’s starts at third earlier this month, in a flex role across a variety of positions and off the bench. It stretches out the lineup and puts less pressure on the middle of the order to produce if Jung, who’s largely hit fifth or sixth, isn’t an empty-calorie bat.
Gavin Collyer brought the heat
Like, more heat than any Rangers reliever has brought in some time, actually. The 99.7 mph four-seam fastball the rookie right-handed pitcher threw in Friday’s win against the Mariners is the fastest pitch any Rangers reliever has thrown in the last three seasons. Left-handed pitcher Brock Burke, on Aug. 10, 2024, vs. the New York Yankees, is the only other relief arm who’s cracked the 99 mph threshold in that timeframe. You’d need to scale back four seasons — when left-hander Aroldis Chapman hit triple-digits 120 different times in half a season with the Rangers — to find a Texas reliever who’s thrown harder than Collyer has.
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The Rangers were the only team leaguewide whose bullpen hadn’t accounted for a single pitch faster than 97 mph before Collyer’s promotion. He’s now thrown 13 of the 14 fastest pitches on the team’s relief staff this season in two scoreless innings of work. The organization prioritized strike throwers over velocity in each of the last two seasons as it’s built its bullpens on relatively small budgets, and while the elite command and control has worked in their favor, there’s considerable upside in an arm with swing-and-miss heat if wielded properly.
One good trend: Joc Pederson’s bat
Pederson, the team’s regular designated hitter against right-handed pitchers, has been a better-than-league-average hitter for the last two weeks. He’s slashed .289/.400/.395 in his last 15 games and, in his last seven, has posted an .899 OPS. To zoom out further, his .658 OPS this season is 45 points better than his entire first year with the Rangers. Zooming out even further, his .731 OPS and 108 wRC+ since Aug. 1 of last year are both above league average.
Does that production match the $37 million contract he was given before last season? Not yet. Is it far more palatable (and, more importantly, playable) than his collective body of work with the club? Yes, and given how Pederson’s season began, it’s been a welcome sight.
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One bad trend: Josh Smith’s value
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The Rangers shifted Smith out of the super utility role and into the everyday second base gig after they traded incumbent starter Marcus Semien to the New York Mets last fall. Smith, a Silver Slugger award winner two years ago, had a better case than any other internal candidate for the job. The largest question to be answered was whether he’d be able to avoid another second-half decline, though given his two-year track record, the Rangers might’ve hoped that they’d have until the summer to find out.
It’s a 74 plate appearance sample size, but the evaluation period might’ve been expedited. Smith’s .484 OPS is tied for the eighth-worst among all qualified hitters leaguewide. He’s been ineffective against right-handed pitchers (.531 OPS), worse against left-handed pitchers (.200) and a negative defender at second base per all advanced defensive metrics.
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The 28-year-old may have earned himself a runway to work through an early-season funk because of the production he provided in each of the last two seasons. The Rangers do have options if they’d prefer a platoon at the position. Duran has been a better hitter (.769 OPS) in his utility role, and elsewhere in the organization, second baseman Cody Freeman could return to competition potentially as early as the end of this month.