2026 Team Previews: Texas Rangers
A detailed fantasy baseball oriented team preview of the 2026 Texas Rangers
Full Series Links and Explanation Page Here
Intro
No podcast for this one, due to the holiday season. I haven’t been “working,” so I haven’t had any time to myself to do any podcasting, but I want to keep publishing these out.
We have to talk about PARK FACTORS for this one. I don’t know if you guys know this, but Texas gets pretty hot in the summer. Historically, it’s been an awesome place to hit. But something has happened over these last two seasons.
And it’s one of those weird situations where you have no idea what to think. The park hasn’t changed. If the weather has been different at all, it’s been slightly hotter the last two summers. And yet, we’ve seen offense dry up in Texas the last two seasons. You could explain that away by saying the Rangers’ lineup hasn’t been as good. And you’d be onto something there. They’re an aging team. Marcus Semien and Adolis Garcia particularly declined heavily in Rangers uniforms the last two seasons.
But that’s not the answer, or at least it’s not the main one. I went ahead and developed some park factor by year data quickly. It’s very simple stuff. I did these stats:
HR/Brl
Average distance traveled of barrels
Batting average on line drives & fly balls
Slugging percentage on line drives & fly balls
Here’s the trend in Globe Life:
The HR/Brl stuff can vary, and that does have a lot to do with who is hitting at home. Semien is one of those guys who was able to post ridiculously high HR/Brl before the last couple of seasons. But even if you take him out, the numbers barely change at all.
Average barrel distance dropped ten feet from 2023 to 2024-2025, and way, way more outs were made on balls put in the air. The .697 slugging percentage on balls hit in the air was the lowest in the entire league by 25 points.
2025 Air SLG Bottom Five:
TEX .697
SDP .722
PIT .729
CWS .739
STL .745
Top Five:
OAK .903
LAD .901
COL .901
PHI .886
BAL .886
The ball seems to have stopped flying.
There’s more information in this article about it. But it doesn’t seem like there’s a good explanation for it. There might be some shady business going on with the baseballs or with the humidor or whatever. This stuff is hard to know, but I would say we should approach 2026 by viewing this ballpark as pretty pitcher-friendly.
Here’s my park factor data sheet.
Hitters
Corey Seager
Age: 31
Pos: SS
Seager missed 60 games last year for his third straight year under 125 games. It’s been a rough go of it on the health front.
But he’s hit .292/.371/.543 with 84 bombs (17.9 PA/HR) while in the batter’s box over these last two years. He’s a phenomenal player. His superpower is his eye at the plate. Every year, you’ll find him in the optimal spot on the Swing Scatter plot:
He swings a lot at pitches in the zone (78%) but does it while rarely chasing (23%). It’s a rare combination. It’s super impressive, and it raises his overall floor for fantasy production just because he’s maximizing his opportunity.
A 15% Brl% last year with a 20% K%. 108 EV90, .301 xBA, .413 xwOBA.
I could go on and on! And maybe I should, but the question with Seager isn’t really about proving that he’s a great hitter. It’s about health. Will he stay on the field next year enough to justify his ADP?
This might be the cheapest cost of his career, going around ADP 100 and seeing that move up to 110-120 in early December.
There aren’t any steals, so you have to build around that. But you won’t find too many guys who hit 30 bombs with a .300 batting average and elite counting stat production after the 10th round, and Seager gives you that if he can get to the 130 games that would require. At this cost, I think it’s a thumbs up from me as long as he comes into the spring with a clean bill of health.
Projection
523 PA, 75 R, 25 HR, 72 RBI, 3 SB, .279/.362/.519
Ranking
Wyatt Langford
Age: 24
Pos: OF
The predicted 2025 breakout didn’t quite happen for Langford. He struggled through a few different oblique injuries and was limited to 134 games. The line:
→ .243/.346/.434, 22 HR, 22 SB, 26.4% K%, 12.9% BB%
The skills are evident.
→ 107.4 EV90
→ .354 xwOBA
→ 83.2% Zone-Contact%
→ 35% GB%
There aren’t too many guys this well-rounded. I believe his K% can drop down a few points next year, evidenced by his strong zone contact rate. He also has an 88th percentile sprint speed. The batted ball profile is very strong:
Lots of young players play in waves, with periods of good and periods of bad. Langford’s green line was pretty steady here:
So he missed time, played hurt, had an elevated strikeout rate, and still ripped off a 22-22 season. I think he builds on that in 2026.
The projection is 26 bombs, 17 steals, and a .261 batting average. I think that’s a good projection. In fact, I’m really liking my projection model results after a few tweaks. But it shows you the kind of awesome roto fantasy baseball upside Langford has if he continues to develop, improve, and let these raw tools play.
Projection
576 PA, 81 R, 26 HR, 74 RBI, 17 SB, .261/.353/.486
Ranking
Brandon Nimmo
Age: 32
Pos: OF
The Rangers acquired Nimmo in a one-for-one swap for Marcus Semien. That fills the hole the Rangers left for themselves by non-tending Adolis Garcia. They get a highly-paid but very good hitter.
Nimmo’s been healthy and is coming off back-to-back seasons hitting 20+ bombs and stealing more than a dozen bags. The batting average hasn’t been reliably good since he’s started hitting for more power, but with a .273 and a .262 mark in the last three years, you don’t feel awful about it.
Become a paid subscriber today to unlock the rest of this post as well as everything else we’re doing here at MLB DW. Projections, dashboards, apps, unmatched tools, tons of dynasty league content, and so much more.