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Texas Rangers confronting reality of minimal playoff chances: ‘It’s looking bleak’

Rangers manager Bruce Bochy finally discussed the Rangers’ dwindling chances of winning the AL West as team shifts focus to 2025.

ARLINGTON — Bruce Bochy openly confronted reality on a quiet Sunday morning inside the stadium where a still-relatively-fresh World Series banner hangs.

As much as he’ll allow himself to, at least.

“They’re disappointed,” the Texas Rangers manager said before Sunday’s 6-5 10-inning win vs. the Minnesota Twins at Globe Life Field. “They’re disappointed for the city, the fans, themselves. It’s looking bleak as far as getting where we want to go this year.”

On one hand: Bochy won’t definitively say that his team is out of the postseason race until it mathematically is. Fair. He has little to gain through a premature concession speech. It’s not in the DNA of a future Hall of Famer to do so either.

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On the other: He’s hardly blind to the circumstances, and Sunday’s comments were the most he’d publicly recognized them yet.

“Sure, nothing’s impossible,” Bochy said. “But you’re realistic.”

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Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy (center) reacted during a Corey Seager at-bat as bench...
Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy (center) reacted during a Corey Seager at-bat as bench coach/offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker (left) and Josh Jung (right) observed in the first inning of a baseball game against the Minnesota Twins on Sunday, Aug. 18, 2024, in Arlington. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)(Tony Gutierrez / AP)

Realistic about the existing body of work and the historical precedence they’d need to rewrite. The Rangers were a season-high five games over .500 on May 8 with a 21-16 record. They have the seventh-worst record in baseball (36-52) since. They are 5-11 in August, 2 for their last 8 and have lost their last seven series. There hasn’t been a team in the 162-game era (since 1961) that’s reached the postseason with the same or worse record as these Rangers through 124 games.

It’d take a herculean effort to finish with a record at .500, let alone a miraculous playoff push. These Rangers, simply, have not yet shown an ability this season to construct the kind of sustained run that is necessary.

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That circumstance breeds comments that tiptoe around the recognition of the present situation and waive at the future. General manager Chris Young broke the ice Thursday when he said “the momentum created the rest of this season will carry forward into the offseason and into 2025.” Bochy took his turn on Sunday.

“It’s a tough year, but it’s not over,” Bochy said. “I still want to finish strong. I think it’d be important for us as a club to finish strong and get that swagger we had back and realize how good they are.”

It’s a slightly different tone than the one Bochy spoke with last week in Boston when he declared that “we still think that somehow, someway, we start clicking and fight our way back in this.” Three consecutive losses to the Twins before Sunday’s walkoff win has the ability to change that. So does the double-digit game deficit in the American League West that has only expanded in recent weeks. Don’t bother asking about the wild card.

Both lines of messaging require a productive August and September regardless. Bochy will navigate a delicate balance despite that. He acknowledged Sunday that Texas’ adjacency to the bottom of the standings will affect how he fills out the lineup. Rest could become a larger priority than it already is for the Rangers’ veteran players, and playing time could shake up depending on how the Rangers handle roster expansion in September.

All that said: Bochy maintained Sunday that Texas’ current standing “shouldn’t change how you come out here and play” and that fans “want to see a good ballgame, they want to see you go hard” regardless of status.

It’s not how the Rangers had hoped to be speaking in the stretch run of their title defense season.

It is. They aren’t prepared to punt it away either.

“We don’t want to give up,” said third baseman Josh Jung, who recorded a go-ahead home run and a walkoff infield hit in Sunday’s win. “We’re not in the best of situations at the moment, but it’s [just about] going out there and competing every night. Don’t give up, don’t give away at-bats.”

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Take Sunday’s win for example. The Rangers trailed by four runs after three innings and went 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position and left eight on base before a five-run seventh inning and the eventual victory. Bochy classified it as “something they needed” postgame.

It hardly moved the needle as it pertains to the Rangers’ slim postseason hopes, considering the Astros won to maintain their 11-game lead in the division. It does fit the mold of their broader understanding of what’s at hand in these last 37 games.

“It’s huge for us in the locker room,” said starting pitcher Tyler Mahle, who made his third start of the season vs. the Twins. “Just for our self-esteem, I feel like.”

Said Jung: “You need that. We’ve put up, it felt like, only one or two runs every night. To put up a big crooked number in one inning, it’s like, ‘Yeah, we’ve still got it,’ and hopefully we can build on that now.”

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They’re on the verge of being entirely out of time to build a playoff push, but it’s not too late to build tangible success that can ideally carry into next season.

It may need to be the new goal.

They may not have another option.

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