{"id":53193,"date":"2025-11-17T17:45:31","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/53193\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:45:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:45:31","slug":"whats-with-globe-life-fields-weird-effect-on-fly-balls-rangers-only-have-theories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/53193\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s with Globe Life Field\u2019s weird effect on fly balls? Rangers only have theories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some things will apparently remain unsolved mysteries for the ages, like Bigfoot, whether that 13-mile object zipping through our solar system recently was a comet or a Starship cruiser, why Nico Harrison ever made that trade<\/a> …<\/p>\n

And, apparently, what it is that happens to a baseball upon contact at Globe Life Field. <\/p>\n

The Rangers have spent a lot of time studying the Globe Life Field Triangle \u2014 or whatever you\u2019d like to call the strange power-sapping effect the stadium has had on fly balls<\/a> the last two years \u2014 and they still don\u2019t have any definitive explanations. More like concepts of theories, at best.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, we have some thoughts, some hypotheses in terms of what\u2019s going on or what potentially could be contributing, but nothing concrete or substantial that we feel we could really sink our teeth into,\u201d GM Ross Fenstermaker said during the GM meetings this week in Las Vegas. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to overcorrect or overreact to the trend line. Obviously, it is a multi-year trend at this point, but we don\u2019t have the underlying explanation as to what\u2019s going on, so we\u2019re going to tread carefully in that regard and continue investigating.\u201d <\/p>\n

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In other words, the Rangers aren\u2019t going to change the dimensions of the park. Which would create another set of headaches, since the dimensions are all tied to significant moments or players in team history<\/a>. It\u2019s 407 feet to dead center, with the seven being in honor of Ivan Rodr\u00edguez; it\u2019s 372 to the left field power alley to honor the first year the team played in Arlington. Changing those numbers would create some explaining. <\/p>\n

Anyway, President of Baseball Operations Chris Young said there have been no discussions about bringing in the fences.<\/p>\n

The multi-year trend to which Fenstermaker referred is two seasons. The park played just fine in 2023. Since then, offense is down. The question, of course, is whether to blame the park or the hitters.<\/p>\n

Consider this: Five everyday players \u2014 Josh Jung, Jake Burger, Adolis Garc\u00eda, Marcus Semien and Jonah Heim \u2014 had OPS numbers below .700 for the season. With the exception of Garc\u00eda, all did have better OPS numbers on the road than at home, and the differences weren\u2019t insignificant. Then again, with the exception of Jung (.756), none of them had OPS numbers of .720 (league average) on the road. To best sum up, they were dreadful at home, merely subpar on the road. <\/p>\n

So, rather than brick-and-mortar changes to the park, it may be more efficient to change personnel or philosophy. They didn\u2019t do the things necessary to create or optimize run-scoring opportunities. The Rangers didn\u2019t walk anywhere last year; their 8% walk rate ranked 23rd in the majors. They saw the seventh fewest pitches in the big leagues. They hit the fifth most pop-ups. And they had the second-fewest number of productive outs in the majors.<\/p>\n

To whatever extent the Rangers can tweak the position player portion of the roster, all of those aspects will become more of a focus than the slugger ethos that dominated last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be better about on-base percentage,\u201d Young said. \u201cWe need to find guys that can work counts, do situational hitting, and we can\u2019t just have an all-or-nothing approach. Some of that is philosophical and some of it is personnel. It\u2019s a combination of both. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think aligning the hitting department with Skip [Schumaker] at the top and then Justin Viele and the staff<\/a>, integrating a philosophy and then holding players accountable to that philosophy to create a collective effort. We need to support them in any way with the resources and tools we have and we need them to buy into the philosophy and execute the philosophy in a way that we feel is necessary, independent of the ballpark. Personnel is a part, but it\u2019s also a philosophical commitment.\u201d <\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t mean there aren\u2019t some real factors beyond their own control that did accentuate the offensive decline. According to data supplied by MLB, drag on the baseball was at a 10-year high in 2025, though the league maintained through the season that there was no significant change to the baseball. Drag was also up in 2024. That\u2019s real. <\/p>\n

At the same time, there were some real advantages to whatever was going on. Overall, the Rangers led the majors in ERA at 3.47, a .11 edge over the next closest staff. At home, though, they posted a 2.82 ERA, more than three-tenths of a run better than anybody else. And, most importantly, the Rangers were winners at home. Their .593 winning percentage at Globe Life Field was the 11th best in the majors. It was essentially top tier. <\/p>\n

The Rangers don\u2019t want to disregard those elements as they build for the future. They\u2019ve spent more than 50 years trying to build a top-tier pitching staff. Now, they have one. They also know it will be difficult to duplicate the numbers they put up a year ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a pitching advantage last year, and we underperformed offensively,\u201d Young said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to find a way to score more runs. There\u2019s no doubt about it. I can\u2019t expect that we\u2019re going to pitch at the level we did last year. That was a one-of-a-kind season in some ways, for the Texas Rangers. And I do think we\u2019re going to have a very good pitching staff, but to expect that we\u2019ll lead baseball and runs prevented is probably lofty expectations. So we need to build a complete team, and we need to be able to build a team that can score runs and support the pitching staff and take some of the pressure off the pitchers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant<\/a><\/p>\n

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The 37-year-old anchored baseball\u2019s best rotation in his first full season back from elbow surgery. <\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/a>Travis Jankowski returns to Rangers as a coach who\u2019s already earned players\u2019 respect<\/a><\/p>\n

The Rangers saw Jankowski work with younger players during his two seasons in Texas \u2014 even the ones who eventually took his job.<\/p>\n

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Clase\u00a0was arrested Thursday at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.<\/p>\n

Find more Rangers coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Click or tap here to sign up for our Rangers newsletter.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some things will apparently remain unsolved mysteries for the ages, like Bigfoot, whether that 13-mile object zipping through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,732,7866,428,6812,1032,429],"class_list":{"0":"post-53193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arlington","8":"tag-arlington","9":"tag-arlington-headlines","10":"tag-arlington-news","11":"tag-article","12":"tag-chris-young","13":"tag-globe-life-field","14":"tag-rangers","15":"tag-skip-schumaker","16":"tag-texas-rangers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53193","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=53193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}