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Texas Rangers’ Josh Jung (6), Jake Burger, center, and Jacob Latz, right, celebrate the team’s win in a baseball game against the New York Yankees Wednesday, April 29, 2026, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo\/Tony Gutierrez)<\/p>\n
Tony Gutierrez\/AP<\/p>\n
ARLINGTON \u2014 There are flaws. They\u2019ve been evident. Occasionally, painfully. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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And, yet, as April concluded with a 3-0 win over the New York Yankees Wednesday, it\u2019s hard to imagine that the season\u2019s challenging first month could have been more productive when viewed via a long-term lens. \u00a0<\/p>\n
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How\u2019s that old saying go? April survival brings later thrival? OK, we\u2019re not exactly Kacey Musgraves as a lyricist. But the point is the Rangers<\/a> aren\u2019t stuck in the middle of nowhere after the season\u2019s first month, even if several of their hitters are going through a dry spell. Wednesday\u2019s game was a pretty Instagram-worthy snapshot of what bodes well the rest of the way.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we match up as good as anybody in the league,\u201d manager Skip Schumaker said after the win pushed the Rangers back to 15-16 heading into May. \u201cWe have faced the best teams, according to every projection and we\u2019re in every single game, even the ones we didn\u2019t end up winning.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt shows a lot about who\u2019s in that clubhouse even though we haven\u2019t had Wyatt [Langford] for much of the month and Corey [Seager] isn\u2019t off to the best start and [Nathan Eovaldi] didn\u2019t have the start he wanted. Could we have a better record? Of course. I think any team would tell you that right now, but you know how we\u2019ve matched up and how our bullpen has been pitching and what we\u2019ve done late in games shows you the kind of team that we have, and that part\u2019s exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n Make Dallas News a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n About the exciting part, so much of it was on display in Wednesday\u2019s win. Stuff like: \u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The remaking of Josh Jung: Jung\u2019s newly discovered ability to restrain from chasing pitches<\/a> has given the Rangers the best version of him. The Rangers went into the season needing to take a serious step forward and not just for a week. They needed more predictability and dependability in the lineup. \u00a0<\/p>\n It was Jung\u2019s fifth-inning single Wednesday that broke a scoreless tie and drove home a pair of runs. It extended his hitting streak to all nine games of the homestand. Since starting the season 0 for 17, he\u2019s batted .381 since April 1. You don\u2019t even need other slash numbers to know how good that is. It\u2019s been the best month of his career, rookie season included. A week is merely a hot streak, but a month suggests a changed player. Going into the season, if April yielded nothing more than an improved Jung, the month would have been a success.\u00a0<\/p>\n Texas Rangers third baseman Josh Jung celebrates as he rounds the bases after hitting a two-run home run during the sixth inning of a baseball game Athletics at Globe Life Field on Saturday, April 25, 2026, in Arlington.<\/p>\n Smiley N. Pool\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n \u201cI think this month was just a reminder for him that he\u2019s a really good player,\u201d Schumaker said. \u201cHe has to keep believing that for the next five, six months.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Said Jung, echoing the manager: \u201cI feel like I\u2019m in a good spot and my goal is to stay there, not try to do too much. Just keep my focus right where it is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Finding usable back-of-the-bullpen pieces: Jacob Latz pitched the final two innings of the game to earn his second save of the season. It\u2019s pretty clear now that Latz is the Rangers\u2019 desired ninth-inning option<\/a>, addressing another need going into the season. The Rangers had no idea who would close games out for them. And it only got muddier when Chris Martin and Robert Garcia flunked in late-inning roles, then ended up injured.\u00a0<\/p>\n Latz, who lost the fifth starter\u2019s job mostly because of how versatile he could be in the bullpen,<\/a> did not mope over being told \u201cwe just need you more in the bullpen,\u201d began the year without allowing a hit to any of the first 30 hitters he faced and has put together a 0.42 WHIP in 16 \u2154 innings this season. It ranks second-best among all relievers. Schumaker even hinted afterward that Latz \u201cmay even [be] becoming the ninth-inning guy,\u201d then stuttered a second before adding \u201cdepending on what lane we\u2019ve got.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe didn\u2019t sulk,\u201d Schumaker said. \u201cHe just took advantage of his opportunity. He wanted to know what role he\u2019d pitch in and he wanted to pitch in leverage situations. I told him we\u2019d give him leverage, but I didn\u2019t know it would be this quick into the eighth and ninth innings. Guys will tell you who they are during the regular season, and he\u2019s showing that he\u2019s ready for the highest leverage situations against obviously one of the best offenses in the league.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Beyond that, the Rangers have found Jakob Junis to pitch in lanes that are full of right-handers and they\u2019ve gotten good results from two spring training surprises: hard-throwing Gavin Collyer and changeup artist Peyton Gray<\/a>. The Rangers were going to need some surprises to pop up in the bullpen. Collyer and Gray have thus far combined for 9 \u2154 scoreless innings.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gotten by without much from their franchise players: Langford has missed a third of the team\u2019s games<\/a> and Seager, who went 0 for 3 Wednesday to drop his batting average to .207 and OPS to .722, slogged through perhaps the worst opening month of his career. \u00a0<\/p>\n RELATED: Until Corey Seager, Wyatt Langford get going, Texas Rangers aren’t going anywhere<\/a><\/p>\n His career track record, however, is an .868 OPS. While nobody is asking him to post that number for the year, if he turns April into the aberration and simply performs at his career norms the rest of the way, his season OPS may be down, but an .860 OPS over the next five months adds a different gear to the struggling offense.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Survived the toughest stretch of their schedule: The first 40 games were going to be a gauntlet for the Rangers and .500 was a realistic goal<\/a>. The Rangers have played four of the six division leaders and will play No. 5 on Friday in Detroit. The arduous stretch is not yet over, with series at Detroit, the Yankees and at home against the Cubs before the opponents seem to soften some. \u00a0<\/p>\n The upshot of all this: Even with those nine games still ahead of them, Tankathon, a site that calculates draft odds and strength of schedule, had the Rangers with the easiest remaining schedule in baseball over the final five months with opponents holding a composite .472 winning percentage. \u00a0<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use<\/a> and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are some signs you are excited about,\u201d Schumaker said. \u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n It may not have been a winning April, but it certainly wasn\u2019t gloom and doom. It was about survival.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now on to thrival. Or a real word that rhymes with \u201csurvival.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Rangers’ Josh Jung (6), Jake Burger, center, and Jacob Latz, right, celebrate the team’s win in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151],"class_list":["post-272244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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