Texas Rangers’ Corey Seager follows through on a ground out to second in the eighth inning of a baseball game against the New York Yankees Monday, April 27, 2026, in Arlington, Texas.
Tony Gutierrez/AP
ARLINGTON – Sure, it’s fun to play with hypotheses. Trying to figure out the problems with the Rangers offense, particularly at Globe Life Field, the last two years, we’ve run through just about all of them.
The stadium inhibits homers, though that’s been somewhat debunked by fans having to scramble to dodge a barrage of opponent homers. The roof should be closed. Or open. Lefties bewilder them. Or is it righties?
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We’re not sure about the others, but we’re positive about our newest finding: Until Corey Seager and Wyatt Langford, the expected franchise forces in this lineup, get going, the Rangers aren’t going anywhere.
The Rangers lost 4-2 to the New York Yankees at Globe Life Field on Monday. The Yankees hit three homers to account for their four runs; the Rangers hit one. To the suggestion the ballpark impedes homers, apparently not for opponents. They’ve homered 15 times in 13 games this season. The Rangers? Seven, counting Joc Pederson’s oppo blast to left center. Max Fried did hold the Rangers to five hits in six innings, but the Rangers are actually 3-4 against lefties this season.
To the new working theory, though, we offer this: Seager went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts and a groundout to end the eighth inning, the one time the Rangers seemed to maybe have something brewing. He also couldn’t make a bare-handed scoop of a deflected two-out comebacker in the third. Ben Rice and Aaron Judge followed that with back-to-back homers. In effect, that ended the game.
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Only thing that made it worse was that it just happened to be Seager’s 32nd birthday.
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“You can tell that he’s grinding through some stuff, for sure, but he’s, it feels like he’s just about to get hot,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “He’s one of those guys that at any moment, it’s going to break through. That’s how I would describe it. I think he’s probably a little little frustrated with it, but I think he’s going to be Corey Seager, still one of the better hitters in the game. I’m confident that he’s going to break through and win a lot of games for us.”
And how would Seager describe it?
“Obviously, I’ve been better,” he said after his batting average dropped to .212 and his OPS to .729. “I’ve just got to be more productive and have better at bats. That’s about it.”
At least Seager is playing. Langford is on the IL with a strained forearm muscle. He’s eligible to come off the IL this weekend in Detroit, though it remains uncertain.
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Meanwhile, it has left the Rangers scrambling to get production from arguably the most important spot in the lineup: The No. 2 spot. The Rangers intended to hit Langford there between lefties Brandon Nimmo and Seager, but Langford struggled to respond early, then dealt with a quadriceps injury and the forearm.
So the Rangers have tried a host of players there. On Monday, they moved Josh Jung, the most productive hitter in their lineup, to No. 2. Quite a promotion for Jung, who was hitting seventh as recently as 10 days ago. He became the seventh different player to start in the No. 2 spot this year for the Rangers, tied with Boston for the most in the AL. In case you haven’t checked, things aren’t exactly going well in Boston these days. By contrast, consider the AL West, where the Astros have used just one No. 2 hitter (Yordan Alvarez), the Angels two (Mike Trout for all but one game) and the Mariners two (Cal Raleigh for all but one). It is a spot that demands reliability and production.
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The Rangers entered Monday ranked 29th in the majors in OPS (.591) from that spot in the lineup, with Langford (16) and Seager (five) accounting for the great majority of starts. Only Boston – again not good company these days – was worse. At least Jung continued his productive streak in his new spot with a single and two walks. And even his double play grounder in the first could be considered a productive at-bat, forcing Fried to throw nine pitches along the way. Then Seager struck out on a sinker below the zone. By the time the night was through, Seager’s career line against Fried had grown to 0 for 11 with five strikeouts.
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“I think it’s unfair to just put it on two guys,” Schumaker said of the idea that the slow starts of Seager and Langford are the sole correlation to the Rangers’ offensive struggles. “We are trying to get as many guys on base in front of our best player, which is Corey. We’ve moved things around. We’re trying to figure out what to do to get more guys on base in front of him, because I truly believe that at any moment, he’s going to get really, really hot.”
With each passing day, it gets a little more urgent that the moment arrive. Because it’s really not much of a theory to suggest that if Seager and Langford aren’t producing, neither are the Rangers. No, it’s not a theory at all. It’s a fact.