SURPRISE, Ariz. — The first thing you should know about his 2025 season is that Joc Pederson wasn’t embarrassed.
Yes, he was disappointed. Disheartened, of course. Disgusted, perhaps.
But even after the worst season of his decade-long career, embarrassment wasn’t on his mind, though improvement and survival certainly were.
“I would feel embarrassed if I didn’t prepare and I didn’t give effort and if I didn’t try my best,” Pederson said this week at the Rangers spring training camp. “But going into last season, I did everything I could to prepare to stay healthy and to be successful. The effort was there. The preparation was there, too. The results weren’t. It’s frustrating. It’s frustrating as … ”
Rangers
Just insert the profanity of your own choosing. You can probably figure out the one Pederson chose. It’s a minor miracle he didn’t use more, considering his season slash line really should be redacted on his baseball cards.
For the record, his .181 batting average was the lowest in the majors for any player with at least 300 plate appearances. It was the second-lowest in Rangers history, ahead of catcher Dick Billings in 1973. The further across you went, it didn’t get much better: A .285 OBP, a .328 slugging percentage and a .614 OPS. And that doesn’t even factor in the broken wrist he suffered from being hit by a pitch in May; it cost him two months to sit and ponder what was, at that moment, a .131 batting average and .507 OPS. It made improving clubhouse chemistry, one of the assets he was supposed to bring with him, impossible.
Texas Rangers designated hitter Joc Pederson walks to the dugout after flying out in foul territory against the San Francisco Giants during the third inning of a baseball game in San Francisco, Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Jeff Chiu / AP
As manager Skip Schumaker said of how veterans used to haze motor-mouthed rookies: “It’s only funny when you are good.”
Said Pederson: “Last year was a tough year, all around. I was injured for, I think, the longest time in my career. I had the worst year of my career. We didn’t make the playoffs. We didn’t win a lot of games. So, it was a failure in a lot of aspects. But with failure comes lots of opportunities to learn and figure out how that doesn’t happen again.
“We have a lot of people in this room that wouldn’t be in this room if they hadn’t failed in the past, learned from it and bounced back. What I mean to say is the game is hard. And I think a lot of us are hungry and motivated to perform better.”
To be sure, Pederson wasn’t the sole reason the Rangers offense flopped. The corner infielders Jake Burger and Josh Jung both had OPS numbers below .690. Adolis Garcia and Marcus Semien had OPS numbers below .670. Both are playing elsewhere in 2026.
Pederson probably would be, too, if playing anywhere had been a free agent. He probably wouldn’t get the same chance to bounce back. Not as a 33-year-old DH. But his deal with the Rangers was for two years.
He certainly seems to have taken the opportunity seriously. Which is good, because if the Rangers offense is to improve, Pederson has to rebound. To that effort, he had an offseason chef and cut out snacking, his biggest vice for dealing with stress. As a result, there is much less of Pederson to stress. He estimated his offseason weight loss at between 15-20 pounds. He worked out regularly with Rangers’ conditioning staff members who live in Arizona. And starting in January, he hit five days a week with Rangers hitting instructor Justin Viele.
The hitting goal was to get back to the more “vertical” bat path he had in 2024 that would allow him to better get the ball in the air with more authority. The flatter bat path he had last year led to more bad contact. He had the lowest hard-hit rate of his career, according to MLB’s Statcast system. It led to ground balls and pop-ups. More than half of the balls he put into play (50.7%) fell into one of those two categories. That ranked in the 38th percentile.
Texas Rangers designated hitter Joc Pederson reacts after legging out an infield single during the third inning of a baseball game against the Houston Astros at Globe Life Field on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025.
Smiley N. Pool / Staff Photographer
In their drills, Viele had Pederson work on posture and “braking” at the back end of his swing while using a shorter bat. Between Viele’s talk of a more vertical bat path to get closer to the sweet spot and the drill work, an idea populated in Pederson’s mind that if he used a shorter bat, it would force him to more naturally create tilt. Pederson had a 33-inch bat at home, an inch to 1 ½ inches shorter than he has typically used. He tried it and the next thing he knew, he was ordering a batch of 33-inch models. Pederson is something of a mad scientist with bats. He loves to try other bats; he was among the first to order “torpedo” bats last year after the early-season hype they created.
“As we got together, there was a lot less of me giving him stuff and a lot more of him self-correcting,” Viele said. “That’s what you really want to see, where they know what they want to do.”
“It felt really good and it feels really good now,” he said of the shorter bat. “So I ordered some and that’s an experiment we will try. But it’s just me going down the rabbit hole of trying to get better. The bad thing is that, like only 2% of major leaguers use bats that short. There won’t be many guys I can borrow from. Luis Arraez uses one that short, so did Tony Gwynn. So, I’ve got that going for me.”
Also going for him is his manager. Schumaker said he had some good conversations with Pederson during his recovery time. The manager spoke of how, in his first managerial job in Miami, he feared facing Pederson late in games because of the damage he could do to right-handers.
“I just want all these guys who weren’t happy with their seasons to get back to who they are,” Schumaker said. “I want him to be feared again, but to be the relaxed version of him. Knowing he’s a dude is going to be big for us, because he’s a really good player. He’s come in in really good shape. He looks good. He’s in a good place. And when you are motivated in the offseason, it really helps coaches not have to push.”
He is motivated. Better word choice than embarrassed. But whatever the word choice, he intends to ensure there will be no repeat of 2025.
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