Texas Rangers’ Corey Seager looks on after a baseball game against the Minnesota Twins, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Minneapolis.
Matt Krohn/AP Photo/Matt Krohn
MINNEAPOLIS – When the final week of the Season That Wouldn’t Die began, the Rangers were in control of their fate in the AL West.
It was time for their stars to take them the rest of the way.
Instead, they took them into the offseason. And if you think this season was long and tumultuous, wait until you get a load of the offseason that began with the Rangers’ 6-4 loss to Minnesota Sunday. Winter is coming. And so is change.
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To be fair, this loss ultimately didn’t matter much in determining the division race. Houston, on the West Coast, did what teams with a chance to clinch are supposed to. The Astros jumped out to an early lead at Sacramento and kept building on the way to a 9-0 bullying. Houston popped champagne in a minor league clubhouse for going 81-81 and surviving the West.
The Rangers instead shook hands, hugged in the clubhouse and tried to come up with explanations for how they couldn’t win the Most Winnable Division race ever. There are plenty of those. Most immediately, though, they went 2-4 against teams with losing records in the final week to continue a season-long trend of being able to neither beat bad teams nor any team on the road. All of which, Skip Schumaker said falls at his feet. He’s the manager. And accountability, he said, was going to start with him.
“We fell short and that’s going to hurt for a little bit,” he said. “That’s the sentiment in the clubhouse. It’s what the coaching staff feels. The bottom line is we just weren’t good enough. We weren’t good enough on the road and we weren’t good enough against teams we should have beat and that’s a reflection on me. I’ve got to look in the mirror and figure out how to move this thing forward because there is too good a talent in that room for us to fall short and we’ve got to figure out a way to get back.”
This, however, extends beyond Schumaker’s first year as manager. This was the third consecutive non-winning season for the Rangers. If we’re keeping count, it’s actually the ninth of the last 10, but recency here is significant. The current team is built around Corey Seager and Jacob deGrom. At least that’s what their two contracts, worth a combined $68 million for next year, suggest.
And those were the “dudes,” the Rangers expected to carry them in the final week. DeGrom flopped in Friday’s start at Minnesota, allowing eight runs in four innings, and had a 5.33 ERA in September.
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“I take all the responsibility for us not making it,” deGrom said after Sunday’s game. “I had to tell [media] too often about too many bad starts.”
MINNEAPOLIS, MN – SEPTEMBER 25: Jacob deGrom #48 of the Texas Rangers looks on during the game between the Texas Rangers and the Minnesota Twins at Target Field on Friday, September 25, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Michael Turner/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Michael Turner/MLB Photos via Getty Images
Seager hit a two-run homer on Sunday. Details: it came in the ninth inning after the Rangers were down by four. He’d gone hitless in his first three at-bats, including an inning-ending double play in the first. For the final week, he went 4 for 25 (.160) with no walks and nine strikeouts. It put the finishing touches on the second consecutive season in which he missed 60 games due to injury. He finished with a .736 OPS, 145 points below his career average entering the year.
“Obviously it’s not where you want to be, but just proud of this team and how they fought towards the end, and all year,” Seager said of the season. “We got through a lot of things. We never gave up on each other. I was just proud of the fight.”
He echoed his pride in the fight when asked specifically about the past week’s performance.
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They were hardly the only guys who didn’t come up big in the final week. Wyatt Langford continued to limp along to the end of the worst year of his young career. Evan Carter, on Sunday, tried to bunt while down four runs with one out and a runner on base. The bullpen, taxed like colonial Americans, crumbled under the weight.
But Seager and deGrom will be at the center of virtually every conversation as the Rangers try to move forward and break their Cycle of Mid. If the Rangers are to improve, they are going to have to either convince owner Ray Davis to dig deep into his pockets, which seems unlikely given his hawkish approach to labor, or they’ve got to reallocate dollars to find more creative solutions. Especially, if by some chance, owners get a salary cap. DeGrom, who turns 39, and Seager, who turns 33, ate up 30% of the team’s salaries this season. The team can’t continue to be that top heavy.
Yet the notion of trading them is complex. Both have the ability to block trades. DeGrom declined a trade to Atlanta at the deadline, saying he believed in the Rangers. Seager has earned full trade protection due to five years with the Rangers and 10 years in the majors. And that’s just getting them to agree to a trade.
Finding a partner? More complex. Seager’s value is at its lowest at the moment and would still require the Rangers to eat salary. DeGrom’s value has only dropped with his finish to the season.
When asked about the potential for change to the roster, both players deferred to management.
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“I enjoy it here,” deGrom said. “I want to be here. But that’s not in my control.”
Said Seager: “That’s not my decision. I’m the wrong guy to ask that question.”
Actually, though, given their no-trade protection, they are the exact right guys. They control their destiny perhaps more than the Rangers.
All the Rangers can do is put options in front of them. Now that The Season That Wouldn’t Die is dead, it’s time to start considering the future.
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