Let down.
And hanging around.
Of the countless things that sports delivers, whether it’s of casual interest to you or part of what drives your day, among the most reliable is that it will disappoint you.
The shades of those disappointments would fill any size crayon box. In the case of the Texas Rangers, from the one-strike-away 2011 group to the 102-loss team in 2021 and every version in between, it’s a team that has disappointed us in the broadest sense in nearly as many ways as it’s had seasons. The difference in that equation is, of course, one.
It’s a life lesson, I like to convince myself. Constantly shape-shifting forms of disillusionment and loss to experience and to cope with and to learn from, all neatly wrapped up in a package that, at its worst, probably shouldn’t factor into the life-or-death category — and at its best, is the best.
The way the 2025 season has gone — and it certainly now feels like a slow-moving storm system that has laid so much waste that all that’s left to look forward to is the offseason clean-up (and maybe a creative effort to get back under the CBT line in the meantime) — I think we would all agree that we now have a new color in the disappointment spectrum that we’d never seen before, or ever considered.
But again, 29 baseball teams are ultimately obligated to level some form of letdown on their fan bases every year. Those are the rules. That’s not a plea for you to shrug off this downer of a season in any way. It’s just the reality we all sign up for.
Envious of Dodgers fans? As star-studded and expensive as that roster has been forever, they’ve won as many World Series (in a season that lasted more than 60 games, at least) as the Rangers since Jacob deGrom was a newborn. And they just lost a nine-game division lead in the space of about six weeks.
Wish the Rangers spent money like the Mets, whose payroll blows away the Dodgers and everyone else? They’ve lost 13 of 15 and plummeted from 1.5 games up in the division to fives games out. In the last seven games, they’ve held 12 leads — and blown 11 of them.
And they haven’t won a World Series since they were gifted the Bill Buckner error in 1986.
Jealous of the three hottest teams in baseball?
The unstoppable Brewers? Never won one.
The surging Padres? Never won.
The formidable Mariners? Never been. All those historically great Hall of Fame legends, and they’re the only major-league franchise that has never played in a World Series.
It’s certainly been less of a disaster for Texas this year than it has been in Baltimore and Atlanta. Arizona, too, this week’s visit to Arlington notwithstanding. And how are Cubs fans feeling about leading the division on July 28 and, less than three weeks later, sitting nine games out? The Yankees’ plummet hasn’t been quite as deep, but the way they’re losing games can’t be any fun if you’re a fan.
Disappointment is part of it, no matter which team you claim as yours in any sport. Certainly in baseball.
But this Rangers season, at least for me, has been the most disappointing of any I can remember.
I said this in June, and if anything I feel more convicted about it now:
Just a virtually unmitigated avalanche of letdown.
That — “Let Down” — of course is the name of the song I’ve probably leaned on more than any in this space over the years. In 2011, I used three lines from the Radiohead song to kick off my season requiem, for obvious and painful reasons:
In 2023, when the Rangers finally outdistanced that 2011 finish, I went back to “Let Down” in the preface to my season-ending book:
But I’ve never leaned into the title itself, until now.
Never really resorted to a bottle. Not my thing. But yeah.
I love this organization, more than any. Far more.
And I love this sport, more than any. Much more.
I’m hanging around, and always will.
But I’ve never felt more let down by a Rangers season. As a fan, as much as I’m wired to push through it, it’s been exhausting.
They teased us.
The Rangers came home from Surprise and stormed out of the gate, winning eight of the season’s first 10. They culminated the hottest start in the league with a Jonah Heim walkoff against one of his former teams, the Rays.
Really, “teased” is not the right word. They validated us.
As I wrote late in May:
Maybe we didn’t expect an 8-2 start. But we expected winning baseball. And early on, we got lots of it . . .
. . . until it was followed by a long, harrowing 21-33 stretch.
But then?
They rekindled hope.
From June 7 through June 15, the Rangers won seven of eight. The next-to-last game in that stretch: an Adolis Garcia walkoff against the White Sox in an 11-inning seesaw of a game.
As I wrote days later:
And yet, an 11-13 skid into mid-July came next, a day short of the All-Star Break, and the Rangers were two games under .500, 9.5 games back in the West, and seventh in the race for the three Wild Card spots. Buyers? Sellers? Who could say.
But then?
They teased us again.
No, once again that’s not the right word.
They duped us.
Deluded us.
Led us astray.
A torrid streak of nine wins in 10 games, starting with that Sunday in Houston right before the Break and concluding with an 8-1 homestand against the Tigers — who owned baseball’s best record at the time — the Athletics, and the Braves.
The next-to-last game in that stretch: a Marcus Semien walkoff against Atlanta in a 10-inning game in which he’d been drilled in the head seven innings earlier.
They duped us into believing they’d turned a corner. That they’d overcome an absurdly bad four months of offense, and were poised to demonstratively flip the script in an American League that lacked a juggernaut.
You (at least some of you) and I weren’t the only ones who believed in the track record of this roster and this coaching staff. The front office came around, too, and believed — so much so that even though the market for a closer was apparently too costly (in prospects, that is) and the market for a bat too barren, out went six pitching prospects and in came a veteran starter and two experienced relievers, all to fortify a staff that already boasted baseball’s best numbers.
But ever since Merrill Kelly, Phil Maton, and Danny Coulombe all left middling teams and joined the pennant race, each has seen his own numbers back up. More importantly, though, the offense regressed as well, melting back into the muddy morass it had been for most of the year.
Since that nine-of-10 blitz, the Rangers have gone an AL-worst 5-12 (which looks like it’s is about an hour or so from becoming 5-13) — tumbling from a season-best six games over .500 at 56-50 (matching the 8-2 start to the year) back to a losing record.
It was at home, facing a Diamondbacks team that had looked in the mirror and surrendered its own season two weeks earlier, that the Rangers’ 2025 felt, once and for all, snakebit. (Sorry.) Only an improbable comeback win in the opener of the series — on the strength of a Rowdy Tellez homer in the ninth and a Jake Burger pinch-hit single in the 10th — prevented the current freefall from being an eight-game losing streak.
And this collapse, for once, hasn’t fallen squarely on the offense. The bullpen has been a tire fire lately. Texas has now lost 22 games in the opponent’s final at-bat, five more than any other team. The pen, which entered the season without a closer and (unlike Kirby Yates in 2024) never had one emerge or come over, is second in baseball in both relief losses (30) and blown saves (24).
If only the Rangers had played liked they are right now — and not like their 2023 version — just two weeks sooner, I think it’s fair to assume they wouldn’t have traded Kohl Drake, Mitch Bratt, David Hagaman, Mason Molina, Garrett Horn, and Skylar Hales to boost the pitching staff and the chase after another 162+.
It might be one of the worst-timed hot streaks this team has had in a long time.
And to reiterate a point I’ve tried pushing in the last two weeks: there almost certainly isn’t a Cole Ragans in that group of pitching prospects the Rangers sent away. Maybe not a Winston Santos, Alejandro Rosario, Caden Scarborough, David Davalillo, Jose Corniell, Josh Trentadue, or Dalton Pence, either.
But here’s the problem with trading those six for Kelly, Maton, and Coulombe (all of whom will be free agents this winter, with no opportunity of any kind for any compensation for losing them). You can only trade Drake once. You don’t get a chance to move Bratt again. From a system that was relatively thin to begin with (which is perhaps why David Bednar isn’t closing games here), you’ve now played all those cards. When you’re looking this winter for other ways to upgrade a roster in need of a bunch of that, now you can’t dangle David Hagaman and Garrett Horn.
Opportunity Cost 101.
Actually, there’s a second problem with those three trades. According to the beat writers, the Rangers have now gone over the CBT line. Now, perhaps that’s not the irreversible misfortune that the loss of prospect capital is — maybe the front office gets imaginative and finds its way back under the tax line before the season ends (though that won’t be easy). For now, it’s a bad fact.
With the trade deadline just a handful of sleeps away, the Rangers were playing possibly their most encouraging baseball of the year, and had clawed their way back into a virtual tie for a Wild Card spot. The front office responded. Rewarded the effort. Hit the gas.
And then the first homestand of August — certainly the way it ended — probably sounded the death knell on this shockingly disappointing season. It at least pronounced the death of any realistic hope I’d held onto. Tuesday night’s and Wednesday afternoon’s losses to the Diamondbacks wrecked me.
I believed in the roster the front office took to spring training. That didn’t even include the exceptional work of Mike Parnell and his group in finding under-the-radar pieces like Patrick Corbin, Hoby Milner, Shawn Armstrong, and Sam Haggerty to raise the floor.
The team’s 8-2 start was far more adrenalizing than shocking. A week and a half in, we didn’t have to ask anyone to pass the Kool-Aid. We already had a full jug of it in hand.
And of course, I believed in Bruce Bochy, and not solely because of the every-other-year thing.
I firmly believe now that I was not wrong to believe then in the front office (especially if it had not been allowed to venture into CBT payroll territory) and in the manager. I just can’t believe, or understand, what has happened to the hitters.
One of them frequently takes his turn in the box and capitulates to the book the league has on him:
No, two of them.
Actually, three.
Two of those three get locked in for a week or two on occasion, but inevitably stumble out of that and back into bad habits, even though surely all those iPad clips clearly lay out for them why it works when it works.
The other of the three seems to get locked up a bunch.
Another couple swing a whole lot and, at least for the last month or two, the results extremely often are baseballs hit straight up or straight down, or not at all.
Another pair was acquired in the offseason to help cure an isolated team weakness, and instead both are having their worst big-league seasons.
Another who continues to cement his place as an indispensable lineup igniter still hasn’t dispelled the concern that he might always need a platoon partner.
It’s a lot of lineup disconnectivity, heavy on bad timing, indecision, bad counts, and bad outcomes. So much so that the box scores that, on the one hand, report plenty of baserunners, in scoring position and otherwise, on the other regularly tell a sad story in the runs column. It’s an offense with credentials but, in 2025 (and to a slightly lesser extent 2024), just doesn’t tack on. Doesn’t capitalize. Doesn’t cash in.
“We were just missing that one hit.” Before long, it settled in as a postgame crutch phrase for the manager.
And there are nights when they don’t do much of anything. Witness this recent stretch of Angels second-year starter Jack Kochanowicz, he of the 6.19 ERA, .302 opponents’ batting average, and .848 opposing OPS. After 19 starts, Los Angeles optioned him in early July to Triple-A. On his return, he made these three starts.
He was optioned back to Salt Lake after that.
Is there a coaching issue? Bret Boone has now spent nearly three times as many games in the dugout this season as Donnie Ecker, the offensive coordinator who was dismissed in May. Hasn’t really changed much.
I stand by this, from June:
I have no reason to believe it’s the coaching. I doubt any of us really do. If it is, it’s because of issues none of us know about, things none of us can see.
In spite of what is probably the best starting rotation, in the context of era (age of the game, that is, not ERA), that this 54-year franchise has ever run out there — and a defense that might be baseball’s best, pick your metric — it’s the hitters themselves who most likely will somehow have kept this team out of the postseason. There might be a trivia question brewing involving teams that have had two top-10 finishes in the Cy Young voting and missed the playoffs. Teams — or team.
And that’s what makes this the most disappointing Rangers season I’ve ever experienced. One single unit makes this roster not good enough to beat good teams as often than they don’t. And not good enough to regularly win games they shouldn’t, and often games they should. The bullpen has had a rough stretch — a very rough stretch — but for most of the season it’s overachieved.
The offense never has.
Bottom three in batting average.
Bottom four in on-base percentage.
Bottom four in slugging percentage.
Bottom three, as a result, in OPS. (Probably as low in productive outs. Sure feels that way.)
Take a look if you’d like at the teams that are worse in each category. All bad lineups on paper, basically playing to their chalk. Not the case here, which has been a big bag of wildly unmet expectations.
Compare 2023, when the offensive attack featured many of the same players:
Second in batting average, and first in the AL.
Third in on-base percentage, and first in the AL.
Third in slugging percentage, and first in the AL.
Third, as a result, in OPS — and first in the AL.
I talk about Sisyphus from time to time. This year, it feels like the hitters aren’t even pushing the boulder (instead, perhaps, taking it for a strike). I can’t ever remember the feeling of a 3-2 deficit in the fifth feeling like the game is cooked a fraction as often as I have in 2025. (Or, lately I suppose, a 3-0 lead in the eighth.) In 2024, we could make the case that the physical toll which the intensity and length of the 2023 run took, plus the shortened offseason, set up the 2024 hangover that’s statistically been a near-certainty among champions in this league.
What’s the argument in 2025?
This isn’t a playoff team. A playoff roster, to be sure. But not a playoff team. It feels like a reality I think I refused to access and tap into for months.
Can the Rangers nevertheless outplay the first three quarters of the season and work their way into the playoffs? Yes, and I’ll be the first to write 4,000 words lionizing their ability to turn things around and get it done if it happens. I’ve just taken too many punches to the junk this season to bet on it at this point. I’d very much like to be very wrong.
I wish The Athletic had let me write more often in 2023 — or that I’d started this Substack by then — because I’d love to look back at what I’d written (meaning how I felt) when the team got swept in San Diego to finish July, extending a horrid streak to seven losses in nine games, which swiftly trimmed the division lead from 4.5 games to one.
And I’ve love even more to see what I wrote when Texas promptly reeled off eight wins in a row right after that, and 12 of 14.
Maybe reliving that would give me some added hope.
Maybe.
What now? Maybe the bandwagon is pulling off the road for some of you. Maybe you’ll flip your attention to preseason football. Not me. I’m in this for the long haul, every day. That will never change. Rangers baseball is part of my core, and always will be. Win games.
I will watch every one of them. I’ll write a bunch of them up. I’ve got another dozen story ideas swirling in the hopper, too. Baseball season is 12 months a year for me.
But what now for the team?
First off, see above: win games. There’s no math that suggests anything less should be the goal for these professionals or the management team that pieced the group together, especially with the trade deadline passed.
Next: prepare, as challenging as the path might be, to get the payroll back under the CBT line before 162. The front office will know the timing (in terms of approaching incentives as well as fractional salary considerations) of when this must happen in order to effect the necessary result.
Part of the challenge, of course, is that simply designating a player for assignment doesn’t remove the balance of the contract from the books unless the player is claimed off the waiver wire (like the Mariners did with Leody Taveras in May). The Rangers would still be on the hook for the remainder of the player’s base salary if the player clears because no team is willing to take on whatever is left on his deal. Pick your player — and I’m not suggesting I have reason to believe any of these are truly in danger of a DFA, but they might be the candidates given the goal — maybe Adolis Garcia, maybe Jon Gray, maybe Tyler Mahle, maybe Jonah Heim, maybe Joc Pederson, maybe Merrill Kelly. Every one of them would sign with someone if he cleared waivers — but unless there’s a very unlikely bidding war, there’s little reason for any team to offer any of them more than the prorated minimum, since it wouldn’t change the player’s 2025 compensation. In other words, Texas would get an offset — both in its CBT number and in the total it would have to pay the player the rest of the way — in the amount of the player’s new deal. If the player clears waivers before hooking on somewhere, we’re talking about less than $200,000 (and dwindling) in CBT relief for the Rangers when he signs with another team.
Let Evan Carter face lefties. Lots of them.
And lead him off.
Give Cole Winn and Luis Curvelo some ninth-inning leads to handle.
Lots of Ezequiel Duran in right field.
Get Cody Freeman back up here.
See if Emiliano Teodo can continue to get straightened out in Frisco, and if so ask him to get in his last relief work of the year in Arlington. Along with Jacob Latz.
And then what next? What are you getting teed up to do in the winter?
Find a catcher. For the long (and preferably immediate) term. (I’m working on this idea.)
Even though your farm system is now getting consistently ranked in the bottom five by all the high-profile publications — and I doubt that would have changed materially even if those six pitchers weren’t traded last month — refer back to the Notes app to see which teams like which of your prospects, and make more Jake Burger-type trades.
Again, the problem there as far as those six traded prospects are concerned is that you no longer have the ability to trade any of them for things you need going forward. And you need a lot.
Figure out who is managing this team the next few years. Does Bochy want to? Does Skip Schumaker, whose son will play at TCU in a year if he doesn’t turn pro next summer? Is one of those two the man Chris Young and Ross Fenstermaker want in the role?
Who else, including those not in uniform, won’t be back, either by choice or otherwise?
This could be a seismically active winter. On the field, it probably needs to be.
It’s been a tough year for me, and not just as a baseball fan. It’s been a year in which the baseball team I love hasn’t consistently given me the positive distraction that I really could have used in 2025. That I fully expected. It’s been very challenging.
And very, very disappointing.
I’m hanging around.
But I’ve been let down.
This was perfect. I just feel wrecked, and not many people understand this feeling. You express it so well.
Duran is a pleasant surprise in right field. We've seen his bullet for an arm at third base, but his accuracy from right field is astonishing. And for some reason, Jonah can actually catch it when Zeke throws it, unlike when Bombe throws it and it always bounces out of Jonah's glove. And I was a real bochy defender up until a couple of weeks ago. There's way too much matchup stuff instead of just letting the guys that are hot play. Evan Carter will never learn to be a lefty hitter unless he gets the opportunity to see it occasionally. I remember reading that Evan's back issues could be something that improve as he gains size and strength with some age, he's still so young and wiry. And Wyatt has just been such a disappointment. He is supposedly talented, but I haven't seen it in 2 years. Keep Josh Smith, keep Corey Seager, keep Evan Carter. I also enjoy the spark that haggerty brings. But we need a veteran leader and policeman in the clubhouse. Pederson was supposed to be that and we know how that went. Thanks for writing that Jamey, and thanks for letting me vent here.