Sep 27, 2024; Anaheim, California, USA; Texas Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien (2) runs after hitting a single against the Los Angeles Angels during the first inning at Angel Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images / Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

A year after winning the World Series, the Texas Rangers finished the 2024 season in third place in the AL West with a 78-84 record. The last time the Rangers finished with 78 wins was in 2017, and they were coming off back-to-back ALDS defeats in 2015-16, which was followed by six seasons without making the postseason at all. Ultimately they made it back in 2023, and won the whole darn thing.

The number one goal for this club will be to at the very least remain competitive, if not make it to October baseball yet again. They have a lot of talented players on the roster, with more on the way, but there are still plenty of questions remaining about what this team will actually look like in 2025.

With the A’s on the rise, we wanted to take a look at the offseason for each team in the division thus far, and see if we can get a grasp on where the Sacramento-bound Athletics could end up. To kick things off, we’re taking a look at the Rangers.

After a 90-win season landed them in the postseason in 2023, the roster regressed a bit in 2024, leading to the Rangers being on the outside looking in come the postseason. Corey Seager was still a five-win player, and Marcus Semien put up four wins of his own, but 2023 All Star Jonah Heim regressed, Josh Jung suffered a right wrist fracture, and Adolis García disappeared.

On the bright side, Wyatt Langford stepped up in his rookie season, putting up 3.9 bWAR, good for third on the team behind Seager and Semien, and they got a huge year out of veteran reliever Kirby Yates, who closed out 33 games for Texas.

After finishing with the third-best offense in baseball in 2023, the Rangers dropped all the way down to the No. 22 ranked offense by wRC+ last year, finishing with a 95 (100 is league average). This was about a 20% drop in production, and the overall record supported that data. García went from a 126 wRC+, or 26% above league average, to a 92, eight percent below.

On the pitching side, Jacob deGrom was hurt for much of the season, tossing just over ten innings, and the Rangers finished with the same ERA as the A’s, 4.37. They finished tied for No. 24 in Major League Baseball, though the A’s 4.24 FIP was slightly better than Texas’ 4.32.

Right here, it’s important to emphasize that there is still time for Texas to make some moves to make what we’re about to say look a little less ugly. That said, four of the team’s top pitchers from 2024, Yates (1.17 ERA), David Robertson (3.00 ERA), Matt Festa (3.34 FIP), and José Leclerq (3.48 FIP) are no longer with the team. Festa was DFA’d, then traded to the Chicago Cubs, but the other three are still on the market.

While it may not seem like a ton, those four players combined for five WAR last season in the bullpen, which isn’t insignificant. None of the players that ranked ahead of these four in terms of FIP pitched more than 20 innings with the club.

They are also without Andrew Heaney (2.2 WAR) in the rotation, and have traded away first baseman Nathaniel Lowe (2.8) to the Washington Nationals.

They’ve made some nice additions, like catcher Kyle Higashioka, first baseman Jake Burger, reliever Robert Garcia (in Lowe deal), and platoon bat Joc Pederson, but they just aren’t quite filling the need that the Rangers have overall. Yes, the offense was down in 2024, but this group doesn’t do a ton to address that, especially with the departure of Lowe.

Last offseason I did an exercise where I put every move each team made into a Google sheet. For the departing players, I put up the WAR they produced with that team the previous season, and for the incoming players, I plugged in their projected WAR. At the end, I added up each column, then combined the two numbers to see how much a team had improved (or declined).

While it’s not terribly scientific, if does provide a bit of a look into how much better or worse a team could end up being. For instance, the Minnesota Twins, who were projected to win the AL Central by many, had lost 12 WAR due to their moves, and it didn’t look like they’d built up enough depth.

For this exercise, it’s also important to remember where each club is starting from, so for the Rangers, they’re trying to build upon a 78-win campaign.

According to the moves that Texas has made thus far, they have lost 3.6 WAR from the team they had a year ago. Burger (1.8), Pederson (1.9), Higashioka (1.3), and Garcia (1.5) are the four big pieces from this winter, but they don’t off-set the departures of the pitchers we’ve mentioned, along with the 2.8-WAR campaign put up by Lowe.

Of course, the Rangers could get a healthy season from deGrom, or one of Kumar Rocker or Jack Leiter could break out, but in looking over this roster, it’s tough to see where the innings are going to come from. Two of Texas’ projected starters tossed over 100 innings last season, and two barely cracked ten. This is a year where some stability would be nice, and right now that’s not an option.

The offense will likely land somewhere in between what they did in 2023 and 2024, and be a little above league average, but with a pitching staff that already ranked towards the bottom of MLB last season that got worse, it’s going to be a tough needle to thread for this club as currently constructed. Volatility will be the name of the game.

As things stand, there is no guarantee that they will finish even as high as third in the West, with the Angels making moves and the A’s spending money this winter.

That all said, they still have Bruce Bochy managing the club, and if there is one person you can trust to lead a team, it’s him. Back when he was with San Francisco, they would win the World Series every other year. In the Bay Area, we called it “even year BS.” Perhaps the Rangers are more in favor of odd years.