Young pledges to 'fix' Rangers issues after disappointing end

ARLINGTON -- When Skip Schumaker stood at the podium at his introductory press conference almost exactly a year ago, he spoke of the kind of team and the kind of players he wanted to build a culture around.

That ethos included speed and athleticism and youth. It was stealing bases and going first to third and playing hard on every single play. When the dust settled around Schumaker’s debut season in Texas, it was clear that things didn’t go according to plan.

“Accountability starts with me,” president of baseball operations Chris Young said during his opening statement on Monday, the first day of the offseason. “Certainly, I am the one responsible for putting this roster together, and we did our best over the course of the year, but ultimately it wasn't good enough to have to overcome some of the shortcomings. That's on me.

“Our job is to tirelessly look for ways to upgrade and improve the roster. When you fall a game or two short, you look back on the season and wonder what might have been if you had just been able to to make one more move or if you'd signed one different player. I'll have those regrets for a while.”

The Rangers finished 80-82, their ninth losing season in the last 10 years. Even so, they finished one game out of a playoff spot due to the historical weakness of the American League West.

A year that was supposed to be a new start for a club that missed the postseason in each of the first two seasons after winning the World Series fell short once again.

“It's up to us to look ahead and figure out how we're going to fix this,” Young said. “As we move forward, it's going to be a very important goal of ours to really address the makeup of this team in terms of health, reliability and dependability. We need to get younger. We need to get more athletic. We need to get more dynamic. We are going to explore and find out how we can improve this roster from that standpoint and put a team together that our fans deserve.”

To that point, the Rangers were without Corey Seager for 63 days due to a pair of back injuries and a concussion. They were without Wyatt Langford for 55 days thanks to a pair of soft tissue injuries. Josh Jung -- probably Texas’ most productive hitter in 2026 -- missed 55 days with a calf strain, along with the final two and a half games of the year with a right hand fracture.

Young also spoke to the club “lacking toughness and grit” at times this season, particularly on the road. The Rangers went 35-46 and dropped all but one series away from Globe Life Field after the All-Star break.

Winning just one of those series could have the difference in playing in October.

“You can't be as under .500 on the road as we were and say that we were as tough as we needed to be,” he said. “I mean, it would be disingenuous in suggesting that. There were times where we did, and there were times where the team showed great fight and great resilience, but the consistency of it wasn't to the level that was needed for us to be a playoff team. That's just very honest.”

No matter what else happens on the field, that is not a recipe for success for any team.

So what’s next? Young didn’t commit to a rebuild or even a retool. But there’s clearly an attempt for change incoming.

“If anything, we need to reshuffle our cards to some degree,” Young said. “I mentioned some of the goals that we have in terms of becoming more athletic, more dynamic. We have to keep our players healthy. We did not get enough from Corey Seager and Wyatt Langford in terms of being out on the field, in terms of games played. Any team that loses their two biggest contributors offensively is likely going to fall short of their goal. And it happened too often this year.”

The payroll remains up in the air. But the personnel almost definitely needs to change if the Rangers want to see October in 2027. That much is clear.

“Our goal is to make this a playoff-caliber team next year, and nothing is off the table in regards to that,” Young said. “We are going to be open-minded to any way to improve this roster.”