Evan Help Us: Will Texas Rangers be buyers or sellers ahead of the trade deadline?

Not surprising: We have entered June, the Rangers continue to paddle around .500 and the people want to know if this team is going to be buyers or sellers?

Well, let’s dive into that and chemistry and the value of coaching changes.

Here we go:

ME: If the Rangers don’t improve, the answer, for me, is pretty easy: Robert Garcia. I suppose somebody could make a run at him as a lefty reliever, but he’s pre-arb eligible and it would require a fairly significant prospect for the Rangers to go give him up. If the Rangers start focusing on 2026, then Garcia needs to get lots of looks as the closer (or as many as a team out of the playoff race could muster).

If the Rangers do improve, it gets stickier. I think if this team is to make a run in the postseason, it needs somebody more established to either share duties at the end of the game or to take them over and align things so the Rangers can go Chris Martin, Garcia and then a closer.

My preseason prediction for an acquisition was Trevor Megill of Milwaukee, but the Brewers are above .500, as we speak, and three games out of the wild card race. They’d have to really hit a rough stretch for that to become more realistic. And Megill, with multiple years of control, would probably require a significant prospect in return. On the other hand, he’s making $1.94 million this year, would have about $700,000 remaining by the deadline and would fit as well as anybody into the Rangers’ tight payroll parameters.

It might be easier to acquire Washington’s Kyle Finnegan, who is a rental and can be free after the year. He’s pitched well this season after saving 38 games a year ago. But at the deadline, he’ll still have almost $2 million remaining in salary and that would require either Washington to assume more of the salary (and the Rangers to give up a better prospect) or would cause the Rangers financial issues (i.e., the luxury tax) that they have been trying to avoid since the 2024 season ended. Pittsburgh’s David Bednar would be another option. He’s pitched very well since a rough opening weekend. The 32-to-3 strikeout to walk rate would grab the Rangers attention.

ME: I often think that “chemistry” can be more narrative than anything else. A team is playing well, guys smile. Guys smile, oh, they love each other. A team smiles when it’s losing? Oh, they don’t care.

The Rangers weren’t a terribly fun and cuddly bunch for much of 2023. But the narrative was: They were all business. That’s the general description for a team that plays well, but doesn’t do silly stuff. They didn’t have a home run trident or a pizza spear. They just took care of business.

That said, after Hedges arrived (and really after the Rangers got a major injection of new blood at the deadline), the dynamic did change. Fresh faces can do that. Hedges also understood the value of lightening the load a little bit and his ability to stay loose helped, too. But it was also the same time the Rangers stared daily card games in the clubhouse and eventually engaged in some weird hot dog eating ritual started by Mitch Garver. It all helped some, I’m sure.

I do feel like this team could use a guy who can loosen the load a little bit for position players. That was supposed to be Joc Pederson, but he got off to a rough start after expectations he’d help this team slug. That makes it harder to be the “fun” guy. With Hedges, there were no offensive expectations. He was just free to be “Hedgey.” But, yes, there are times from my perspective that I feel this team needs to the game is supposed to be fun.

The one caveat on all that is this: Even with the small behind-the-scenes glimpses I get of the team, it is hard to determine exactly what goes on all the time.

ME: I honestly don’t know. Bochy hasn’t given any hints, so we’re all just left to guess. It would be easy to surmise that this hasn’t been a ton of fun and, at age 70, who needs this. On the other hand, managers love the challenge of strategy and problem solving and are very competitive. So you wonder: Would he want to walk away with two years of bad taste in his mouth? I wish I had an answer. I do know that Bochy seems so at home in a dugout and around players. I don’t think I’d be surprised with whatever his decision ends up being.

As for the successor, Skip Schumaker was brought in to be the very possible next-in-line. I expect that Schumaker will also be of interest to other clubs this offseason, maybe even before as clubs start to look towards ‘26. To that point: Will Venable was here as the potential next-in-line, but the White Sox hired him to be their manager for 2025. So, designated successors are a nice concept, but never a guarantee. Call it the Will Muschamp principle.

I also would not gloss over the possibility of Bobby Wilson, who has been on this staff now for four years and who learned under Mike Scioscia as a player and Bruce Bochy as a coach. It’s a good bloodline and he’s got a great temperament for the job. He’s going to manage somewhere, some day.

ME: I think Chris Young will do everything he can to add. But I think the difference from last year to this year is that the Rangers can’t just hope they will get better; they’ve got to play better for an extended period. And I’d suggest that the Rangers have about a five-week window in which to do it. This team, I don’t think, will wait until the final weekend before the deadline to declare.

I also believe that if the Rangers sell, they will try to be fairly aggressive on that front. I’d think guys who fall into that basket are Tyler Mahle, Jon Gray, a number of veteran relievers and, if somebody is interested, Adolis García.

The Rangers have a nine-game homestand immediately after the All-Star break ahead of trade deadline week. If they are to add, they must be over .500 by then. As I write this, there are 38 games between the conclusion of the series at Minnesota and the end of that homestand. Can this team go 23-15 or better in that stretch? I think that’s kind of what you are looking at for them to be aggressive in adding.

ME: Well, it’s often been said to me that this offense goes as Marcus Semien goes. But mostly it was said when he was in the leadoff spot. And you could draw a direct connection: If the leadoff man is hot, the rest of offense follows.

I’m not sure if the same applies when Semien is now hitting fourth. But what I will say is that nobody in the Rangers lineup has been as hot as Semien is at the moment. When somebody gets that hot, it has the ability to carry the entire offense for a while.

As to the rest of your question, I think we’ve kind of hit on that. The Rangers have a little more than a month to get hot as a team. If they don’t, I do think you will see a fairly significant re-positioning that may begin around the trade deadline, but might carry over into the offseason. I don’t think it’s in Chris Young’s DNA to consider a long-term rebuild. But I do think he’d consider what tweaks - major or minor - need to be made to make the Rangers a serious contender in 2026.

ME: I will probably oversimplify a bit here. But I think the game has started to cycle back towards a more complete offensive attack. Trying to muscle up and hit homers and nothing else just doesn’t work. Nor does the idea of simply “getting off your best swing.”

I think the teams that are successful and remain successful are the ones that have the best approach to both understanding their swings and understanding their opportunities. I don’t think the Rangers have been as good at optimizing their opportunities as is necessary.

One example (even in a win): On Sunday, with two on and no outs, Alejandro Osuna took a pitch, then showed bunt, then went straight into a regular at-bat. The at-bat seemed, to me, to call for a bunt, especially from a young player, capable with the bat who had hit the first skid of his young MLB career. After the game, Bochy said he took the bunt off because he wanted Osuna to swing the bat. Bochy is not a big fan of the bunt. That’s a strategy decision. It can be debated.

But, I think a more pressing concern is that veteran players have gone to the plate without what appears to be a well-defined plan with runners on base. The idea should be to get off the best swing in the situation, but if the situation calls for hitting the ball to the right side, then that comes first. If the situation calls for a fly ball to the outfield, absolutely try to hit a deep fly ball to the outfield, hopefully into the gap, but the first priority must be that it is at least a fly ball deep enough to get home a run. My point: These are not mutually exclusive ideas. You can both try to get off a good swing and make it a good swing that aims to accomplish a specific duty first.

ME: I think the biggest advantage is simply this: A different voice is going to say things in different words and different tones. And that may resonate better with some players than had a previous message, which, in many cases players have heard for multiple years. It doesn’t mean the previous coach was bad, only that a new way of getting messages across potentially unlocks some players who have found themselves in mental knots.

I can assure you this: No in-season coaching change is meant to bring in some magical new technique. It’s about communication.

The best coaches, the ones that last the longest, have the ability to constantly evolve their messaging to players while also taking in all the new technology and data. But as deep as the information can be, disseminating it in short, simple bytes is essential. Last thing you want is a player trying to still interpret and apply the message as he is walking into the box or to the mound.

About cons to an in-season change: I’m not sure I see one. You get to a point where you change a coach or two and it’s basically an acknowledgement that something has to change and this is the “easiest” change to make. I’ve never seen a story that suggested “if only Team X had kept Coach Y, everything would have turned around.” Either it turns around and a new coach gets some credit or it doesn’t turn around and the ultimate revelation is that, well, the issue at-hand was bigger than a coach. It was the players.

ME: It’s gonna be hard to top Ivan Rodriguez and maybe Adrian Beltré and, look, Josh Hamilton remains the singular greatest talent I’ve maybe ever covered on a regular basis. The window was short, but, my goodness, the ability.

I’m looking at the Rangers’ Franchise Four bobblehead that the club gave out a couple of years ago that has Beltré, Rodriguez, Nolan Ryan and Michael Young. One had longevity (Young), one had an all-time career and reached important milestones with the Rangers (Ryan), two were among the best five to ever play their positions and spent most of a decade doing that for the Rangers. I guess check back with me in a couple of years.

Seager has already authored one of the greatest moments in Rangers history and won the World Series MVP. But let’s see where he is in three years in of both position and his reliability, health wise. I think those are the two biggest obstacles he faces on that front.

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