ARLINGTON, Texas — Texas Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young said Monday that manager Skip Schumaker and his staff have done a great job in their first season together, and that a September five or six games over .500 would put the club in a good spot.
Young made the comments on “G-Bag Nation” on 105.3 The Fan, a few hours before the opener of a seven-game homestand.
A weird season of injuries has made the staff hard to evaluate, because Texas has had its best players hurt.
“Skip has done a great job, and the staff, they’ve done a really, really good job,” Young said. “There’s going to be room for improvement, there’s no doubt, but I do think that these guys have given an unbelievable effort. Their communication has been tremendous. We’ve had a weird season with some injuries, and sometimes it’s hard to evaluate perfectly how a staff is done when your best players have been hurt.”
“So what I would say is at this point in the season, we’re in a position to have a good month here,” Young continued. “If we can have a good month, similar to what we did the month of June, it should put us in a really good spot. I think our worst month, we’ve been two games under .500. Our best month, we were five games over. The month of September is approaching, and if we can go five or six over, we’ll be in a really good spot. But I have no doubt that Skip and the staff are prepared. They’re working their tails off, and they want this as badly as anybody.”
Schumaker is in his first season managing Texas. The Rangers are 67-70 with 25 games left.
Texas Rangers Go 2-4 On The Road Trip
Texas won the opener 11-2 at the Chicago White Sox and the finale 7-4 at the Milwaukee Brewers, and lost the four games in between.
Sunday’s win in Milwaukee is Young’s example of what the Rangers look like when they play their own game.
“Obviously, the road trip started well and ended well, and everything in between was, frankly, pretty bad,” Young explained. “And so you’re certainly happy we got the win yesterday. I think it was a great example of when we play our game that we can compete with some of the best teams in baseball. But in between, really, it was just too sloppy, and there’s a lot that we have to clean up, and we’re a better team than what we showed.”
“Game one in Chicago was wonderful. The guys came out and really swung it, and you felt like it was going to set the tone for a great road trip, and then we fell flat the next two days, and it carried right into Milwaukee,” Young added. “You certainly knew when you went into Milwaukee playing one of the best teams in baseball that you were going to have to be on your game. I think the way the last two games in Chicago went, there was some concern as to how well we were actually going to be able to play. And so to bounce back yesterday was big. We’ve got to turn the page and come home where we have played relatively well and turn it on. There are 25 games left, and we’ve got to go out and be one of the best teams in baseball for the next 25 games. And if we can do that, we should be in the playoffs.”
Young listed pitching, hitting, baserunning, and defense as the problems on the trip, and said some of it was players pressing.
Chris Young On The Texas Rangers’ Big Guys
Any team in the league struggles when its best players do not produce collectively, Young said.
“Look, I’m not going to say it’s as simple as that, but certainly we had a couple games where we didn’t get the best out of our big guys,” Young said. “And any team throughout this league, when your big guys don’t do well and they don’t do well collectively, they’re going to struggle. And certainly we ran into that over the road trip. There’s no doubt about it. So it’s something that we have to have performances from Corey Seager and Brandon Nimmo and Wyatt Langford and Jacob deGrom and MacKenzie Gore. And we need these guys to be the guys that we know that they can be. And if they do that, I’ll certainly bet on our team.”
Corey Seager, Wyatt Langford, And The September Lineup
Seager is in the fifth season of the 10-year, $325 million contract he signed before 2022. He and Langford have combined for five injured list stints this season, and Schumaker has used the designated hitter spot to manage their workload against left-handed pitching.
Nimmo came over from the New York Mets in a trade in late November. Gore arrived from the Washington Nationals in an offseason deal.
Third baseman Josh Jung has not played since July 21. Young said Monday that Texas may be able to cut days off Jung’s injured list stay.
deGrom starts Monday against the Athletics. First pitch at Globe Life Field is 7:05 p.m. CT. Texas is second in the American League West, two games behind the Houston Astros. The game airs on Rangers Sports Network.
