How Bad Are the Texas Rangers This Season?

How Not to Play Baseball Part One: Hitting

The Texas Rangers hitting performance, or lack thereof, this season is on pace to be one of the worst in the team’s existence. Every player on the team is combining for a monumentally awful season.

There is only one player on the team hitting above .300, the illustrious Adrian Beltre. Meanwhile, three of the team’s regular starters are hitting below the mediocre Mendoza line (.200). These players are struggling Catcher Robison Chiniros, the ever-troubled Rougned Odor, and the home-run or bust candidate Joey Gallo. You can even throw in Ruan Rua who is drowning at .177.

Remember last season when the Rangers hitting was atrocious but at least they blasted home runs quite often? Well, this year they can not even manage that and are only 8th in the AL.

Speaking of rankings, Texas is falling behind there as well. At this point in the season they sit 13th in hits, 14th in On Base Percentage, and 15th in Batting Average, Slugging, and Strikeouts. Those are some important categories to fall behind in. The only two categories where they are in the Top 3 are At Bats and Hit By Pitches, where they rank 2nd.

Texas’s triple-slash line reads .225/.300/.382, which is dreadfully low. Arizona is the only team lower than the Rangers in all three categories.

To find the last time the Texas Rangers were this anemic in the hitting game, you have to travel all the way back to 1972, the Rangers inaugural season in Texas. The ’72 Rangers held a measly .215/.301/.298 slash line at this point in the year. It is the only time where the Rangers batting average was lower than this year’s. The 1972 Texas Rangers rode their pathetic stats to a (54-100) season.

Why is this important? You cannot win a game without hitting the ball. And hitting is just not in the Rangers vocabulary this year.