They had played almost 10,000 games across 63 years, 9 playoff appearances and 1 Word Series. In 2023 the Texas Rangers shocked the world and left its own fans stunned. After 6 consecutive losing-seasons, the historical drought that the Texas Rangers have faced down, has sprouted into a World Series win.
The Texas Rangers started the season like any other season, except for one key thing. Over the offseason the Rangers invested 185,000,000 dollars into a 2x Cy Young winner and 4x all star Jacob deGrom. After only six starts for the Rangers in 2023, deGrom blew out his right elbow, leading the Rangers to sign Max Scherzer at the trade deadline, who also got injured. Through the first 60 games the Rangers had a tremendous record of 40-20, even though the team lost many key players to injury, per MLB.com.
Through the Regular season the Rangers have had six players in the hitting lineup to have over a .500 slugging percentage and 14 to have over a .300 on base percentage. These numbers followed through the Postseason and into the World Series. Marcus Semien led the Rangers with the most hits and runs in the regular season at 122 hits and 185 runs. In the Postseason, Corey Seager led with 18 runs and 21 hits. On the fielding side, the Rangers were the best team in the league, regular season and postseason, with a fielding percentage of .990 and a league low amount of errors committed with 57.
The Rangers have a history of losing. Through 63 seasons they have only had a winning record 22 times. After the conception of the team in 1960 has 4,740 wins and 5,218 losses with a win percentage of .476. Their winningest manager is Ron Washington with a record of 664-611. Some are speculating that there are chances that the Rangers will not return to the World Series. Ryan Fagan of Sporting added, “So we cannot say with certainty that the Rangers will repeat as World Series champions.”Others are saying they look forward to the Rangers being even better in the 2024 season. “Here’s a scary thought for the rest of MLB: next season’s Rangers might be even better than the club that just lifted the championship trophy.” per R.J. Anderson of cbssports.com.
All in all, many people are on the fence about the 2024 season. The Rangers are looking to have many stars come back from injury including Jacob deGrom whose play could well lift the team to over 90 wins. Time will only tell and fans can only hope for a great off-season and for some hopeful pickups.
