Everything Is Bigger in Texas. Even the Slumps.
A month ago, the Texas Rangers were all but a lock to make the postseason. Now they’re on the brink of an epic collapse.
As recently as mid-August, the Texas Rangers were in excellent position to make the postseason for the first time since 2016. They led the American League West by 3.5 games over the Houston Astros — a solid edge, even if it was down from a high of 6.5 games in late June — and they had a commanding 7.5-game lead in the AL wild-card race. An average of the various sabermetric forecast models gave Texas a 97% playoff probability — which, while obviously not 100%, is about as safe as it gets by that point in the season.
Fast-forward to today, and the Rangers’ certainty has given way to anxiety. The Astros’ recent annihilation of the Rangers — Houston swept Texas by a combined score of 39-10 over a three-game series — was indicative of just how far off the rails things have gone for the Rangers in a very short time. While they scored a key victory over the Toronto Blue Jays (a wild-card contender) on Monday, the Rangers’ playoff hopes are still hanging in the balance at 65%, as they are now two games back in the AL West and are clinging to the final spot in the wild-card standings.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. The Rangers’ bold experiment — spending boatloads on talent to quickly build a World Series contender — worked well for most of the year. And if anything, Texas was poised to finish the season even stronger than it started after swinging trade deadline deals to add pitchers Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery to shore up one of the team’s only weaknesses.
On paper, the Rangers were the team that bolstered themselves the most for the stretch run. In reality, they have one of the worst records (18-18) of any playoff hopeful since deadline day.
Even stranger: the midseason acquisitions have actually performed well.
Scherzer has an ERA of 3.63 (24% better than average) in seven starts; Montgomery is at 4.20 (6% better) in seven starts as well. By Wins Above Replacement, they’ve been two of the best midseason acquisitions in MLB this year. Unlike other teams with big, unfulfilled post-deadline plans, Texas has actually gotten a lot out of the players it added for the playoff push.
So why is that playoff push now in doubt? It may have been that their deep well of strong contributors — Texas had six All-Stars, including five starters — went from being a driving factor behind their surprise success to being, in fact, too good to be true.
Since mid-August, 10 of the Rangers’ top 12 players by WAR at the time have seen a decrease in their pace of production. That list includes hitters (such as Adolis García, Ezequiel Duran and Travis Jankowski) and pitchers (Dane Dunning, Nathan Eovaldi, Jon Gray), as if the entire roster had been cursed by a slump at the worst possible time.
And things could get even worse, as García went to the injured list after exiting last Wednesday night’s game with knee discomfort. Although beating the Blue Jays — who are neck and neck with the Rangers and Seattle Mariners in the wild card race — boosted Texas’ playoff odds by a whopping 15 percentage points (in concert with a Seattle loss), this team needs to act like its season is on the line pretty much every game from here until the end.
Whether it was the pressure of a pennant race sinking in, a developing habit of blowing leads (they lost six games they’d previously led by multiple runs, second-most of any team since Aug. 15), an accumulating list of injuries, or the players who’d performed above their heads simply falling back to earth, the Rangers are now staring at potentially joining an elite club of late-season choke jobs: The list of historical teams with at least a 97% playoff probability who eventually failed to make it in is short enough to count on two hands.
Even with a proven championship manager in Bruce Bochy to keep things steady, it’s hard to keep the wheels rolling on a breakout season when nearly everybody begins to slump at the same time. Now the Rangers find themselves in a fight to keep the postseason spot that had been theirs all season long — a situation that seemed unthinkable less than a month ago.
Filed under: Baseball