2025 ZiPS Projections: Texas Rangers

For the 21st consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Texas Rangers.

Batters

If you were looking to assign blame for the Rangers going from being World Series champions to having a 78-84 season, you’d have a bounty of targets. From a Pythagorean standpoint, the collapse from one year to the next was even worse; the 2024 Rangers bled 12 wins compared to 2023, but in terms of run differential, they dropped an impressive 21 wins. Given the widespread nature of their disappointing season, the latter number is probably closer to the “true” decline.

The offense’s contribution dropped in half, from 34.1 WAR in 2023 to 16.9 WAR in 2024. And unlike the 2014 squad, the last Texas team to so dramatically underachieve, the 2024 Rangers can’t really put the lion’s share of the blame on injuries, at least on the run-scoring side of the equation. Evan Carter missed most of the season with a back injury, but he also only played in 23 regular season games in 2023. Corey Seager typically misses a couple dozen games a year, and while Josh Jung’s fractured wrist was a stroke of bad luck, Josh Smith was a very good replacement. A lot of the lost performance came from healthy, established players, and even worse, a good number of those players are veterans on the back end of their respective career trajectories.

In a bit of good news, ZiPS sees Father Time’s hit to the 2024 underachievers as more of a sharp jab to the nose than a brutal uppercut that knocks them to the mat. Marcus Semien, Adolis García, and Jonah Heim are all projected to play better ball in 2025, though none are projected to quite get back to their 2023 level. This isn’t unexpected either, especially from the first two. Semien will turn 35 before the end of the season, and thanks to a rather late start in the majors, García will already be 32 when the season starts. Wyatt Langford and a (hopefully) healthier Jung also ought to make gains, as will Carter.

In the end, the Rangers don’t really have to do all that much to their lineup. They project well everywhere, and that includes role players like Smith, Sam Huff, and Justin Foscue. Some minor moves to improve the team’s depth would be helpful, but they aren’t strictly necessary.

Pitchers

If you think the graphic looks bleak, ZiPS is actually quite a bit more pessimistic, thanks to its disagreements with our Depth Chart’s projected playing time. ZiPS thinks most of the rotation will be less healthy than the Depth Charts do, especially Jacob deGrom; the computer knocks more than a 100 innings off of the straight-up projection that doesn’t use the FanGraphs Depth Chart. It isn’t ideal when the pitcher with the best projected WAR among the hurlers under contract is the guy forecast for 51 2/3 innings. I don’t think the Rangers should be content shopping the second-tier pitching section of the free agent market; if they don’t sign at least one of the top five or so starters, it’s a missed opportunity. Tyler Mahle, Jon Gray, and Cody Bradford projects as mid-rotation starters if healthy.

ZiPS projects Kumar Rocker as ready, with the second-best projected ERA among Rangers starters, and thinks Jack Leiter can at least contribute to the rotation. But the computer doesn’t see much in the way of lesser in-system reinforcements, though I should note that this rundown doesn’t include Alejandro Rosario, who hasn’t yet reached Double-A.

As for the bullpen…

Shoot, do I have to talk about the bullpen? I was hoping that if I kinda just trailed off, your eyes would get distracted by the graphic and the tables and you’d forget that I didn’t actually complete my thought. The bullpen ranked 25th in WAR this season and four of the relievers hitting free agency — Kirby Yates, David Robertson, José Leclerc, and Andrew Chafin — combined to be worth more than 4.00 of the unit’s 2.0 WAR (the rest of the ‘pen was comfortably below replacement). Like your car’s value five minutes after you drive it off the dealership’s parking lot, the bullpen is underwater. ZiPS only projects three of the top 13 pitchers on the depth chart to be meaningfully better than replacement level, and precisely none of them project to be an average reliever in 2025. Combine a dreadful bullpen with a lineup that appears to be quite solid, and it’s a formula for a lot of late-inning tragedies to be penned.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that this is a November team rundown, not one of the early-January stragglers. Texas still has a lot of time to replace the departing arms, and while I’m not typically one to advise teams to spend ludicrous amounts of cash on relievers, the Rangers should totally consider spending ludicrous amounts of cash on relievers. This is not a situation like the Mariners or the Phillies; the Rangers don’t need to fill out the bottom of the bullpen, but the top and middle of it.

Texas projects as an 80-85 win team right now, but the nice thing about the roster is that there’s a great deal of clarity about where the team’s weaknesses are. The Rangers are one of the more upgradeable .500ish teams this winter, though you’re probably going to have to wait a few months to see if they agree.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2025 due to injury, and players who were released in 2024. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Ukulele Dixieland Jazz band that only covers songs by The Smiths, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.11.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. ZiPS is not designed as a playing time predictor, but as a predictor of what a player would likely do at the major league level. It works well enough on playing time for established major leaguers, but it doesn’t know the specific contours of a team’s situation to the effect that it can make judgments on who a team will be playing. When the team standings are run, I do have a model for playing time that uses my input, but here, ZiPS has zero input from Dan other than occasionally changing a position.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on Bluesky.