Texas Rangers’ Evan Carter shows bunt during the sixth inning of a baseball game between the Texas Rangers and the Athletics, Sunday, April 26, 2026, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Julio Cortez/AP
ARLINGTON — In a nearly three-year search to fix a nonexistent offense, the Rangers have tried one change after another. They’ve changed personnel. They’ve changed hitting coaches. They’ve even changed managers.
Next up: Changing philosophies?
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Built to slug but unable to hit fastballs, the Rangers are toying with and talking about small ball. While new approaches are both intriguing and necessary, it still ultimately comes down to the talent. Can old sluggers learn new tricks?
“I do feel like there might be some things on the table that might be a little unconventional in the ‘new-school’ type of way the game is being played to try to manufacture a little bit more than maybe we’ve done before,” manager Skip Schumaker said this week. “But you also have to remember the personnel that you have and who are the guys that are going to be able to do that. You don’t just want to hit-and-run if you’ve got a non-baserunner at first base. You have to do it the right way because just doing something for the sake of it is a sign of panic and we don’t want that in the clubhouse.”
We’ll get back to this in a moment. We’re just still stuck on small ball suddenly being considered “new school.” Maybe contact really does matter after all. Maybe the bunt can be useful. But we digress.
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Whether old is new or not, the Rangers are leaning into the idea more. Perhaps they, like everybody else, have noticed that resourceful Tampa Bay has once again created an edge for itself by turning more to contact and opportunism.
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The Rays, who have the best record in the AL, are in the top 10 in virtually every situational offensive stat that portends to small ball. They lead the majors in sac bunts and total sacrifices and are second in percentage of “productive outs,” as calculated by Baseball-Reference, which is mostly a measure of putting the situation over the swing. The Rangers began Wednesday with the third-lowest percentage in that same statistic. They got off their best swings, for sure, but rarely did what the situation called for. What was that thing Ron Washington used to say? Do what the game asks?
Well, it appears they are going to try that on for a change. Wednesday’s decision to move on from Andrew McCutchen and replacing him with bunting fool Nicky Lopez was a tweak of the roster designed to make small ball, particularly from the bottom of the lineup, more viable.
“We’ve all discussed it and thought about ways we can try to manufacture runs a little bit more,” president of baseball operations Chris Young said. “But we also have six guys in the lineup right now, without Corey and Wyatt, who are above league average OPS-wise, so we are doing some things well. But it seems like the consistency of scoring runs and maybe turning the lineup over at the bottom has been a challenge, and so this is an opportunity for us to try to change the personnel a little and maybe the style of play at the bottom of the lineup. It wouldn’t shock me if we see more opportunities for small ball.”
And it’s not just the manager and the POBO saying it. It’s also the guy who has demonstrated more real clubhouse leadership skills in two months than any player around here has in five years saying it. Brandon Nimmo didn’t say it in so many words, but he challenged his teammates this week to function as an offense, not as individuals. That meant some self-awareness to identify attributes that played into offensive cohesion. He didn’t just say it. He sat down with several younger players to discuss it.
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Maybe it had a hand in the Rangers’ eight-run first inning Tuesday. Maybe it had a role in the first-inning Wednesday when the Rangers created a run on a single, an advance on a wild pitch and another on a fly ball to third before Nimmo singled the run home.
“The guys really showed a resolve [Tuesday] that I thought was characteristic of what this group is about, and it was fun to see,” Young said. “My hope is that we build on that and continue the good at-bat quality and come out and compete like that over and over because I do believe we have some talented baseball players.
“We’re going to get healthy here at some point. My hope is that when we do, we can hit a nice spell where we play good baseball for a while.”
Bunts aren’t going to save the Rangers. Adding Lopez, who was released by the Cubs earlier in the week, isn’t going to save the Rangers. There are more problems, too. Like, can anybody hit a fastball? It may not be solvable. By the end of July, the Rangers may be sending players away like they are Amazon.
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But, in the meantime, there is plenty of opportunity to play that good baseball. If the Rangers are willing to do things a little differently and if they are willing to take a team-first approach to offense.
If not: Bigger changes likely await.