Texas Rangers GM Chris Young was overdue in calling out his fat & happy team

Unless the Texas Rangers flip their season immediately, they will finish with a losing record for the seventh time in the last eight years.

With their 2023 World Series T-shirts and hats, Rangers fans are perfectly OK with that ugly stat, because that one non-losing season was the greatest year of their baseball lives. The team’s GM, however, has had it with this belly flop toward the bottom of the American League West.

The man responsible for so many moves that made that World Series possible, and for trusting the players to turn a losing season around before the trade deadline, snapped this week. Before his team ended their seven-game home stand, against the Pittsburgh Pirates on Wednesday afternoon, Young took to the local air waves and pointed a verbal pitching machine at his players. It was over due.

“I can’t get caught up in it because the standings are the standings. It is what it is,” Young told The Gbag Nation show on 105.3 The Fan this week. “What I want to see is us go out and play winning baseball from here on out. I want to see us play with passion, energy and grit, fight and determination.

“Because this season has been embarrassing for us. This is not what we expected. And I expect our players to be equally as embarrassed as I am how we’ve played.”

Translation: Try harder. As much as these players earned their World Series celebration and rings, they had this rant coming, too. The team is fat and happy, and the players need to hear it from someone they should listen to.

For a GM or coach to publicly challenge his team like this, things have crossed from “Bad” to “I’m Going To Be Sick.” You can only press this button once every other year.

The last time a Rangers GM used the media to hammer his team was the spring of 2002, when John Hart called his team’s performance “a joke.” This is something that Young’s predecessor, Jon Daniels, probably could not have done. Not to this degree.

Young is a former big league player, giving him a degree of credibility in a clubhouse that few MLB GM’s possess.

“I want to see us fight to the finish line. Whatever that means in terms of the standings or in the record that will happen naturally if we go out and play good baseball. I want to see some improvement as we go here,” Young said. “I know this team is capable of more than we’ve shown. My expectation is that we do that these last six weeks.”

After their 1-0 win against the Pirates on Wednesday in Arlington with their sixth walk-off win of the season, the Rangers improved to 59-69. For the time being, they are closer to the last place Angels and Athletics than the first place Astros. Not repeating as World Series champions is no sin. The sin is a record this bad despite having the sixth-highest payroll in MLB.

Forget the World Series, or even the playoffs. Those are gone. The goal now is to avoid further embarrassing yourselves as some miracle October lightning bolt that should never have happened. Changing that narrative only happens if this team reaches .500.

We are talking about the Rangers, a team that before last season had not had a winning record since 2016. This ‘24 team is not those teams, but the results look the same.

The Rangers have 11 series remaining, six against teams with losing records. If they don’t beat up on the White Sox, Angels and A’s, it means the Rangers have been beset by injuries, or the guys are not listening to their angry GM. Or, they’re not good.

Because the way they are playing isn’t good; Young popped for a reason. The pitching hovers around “Barely Average.” The offense hovers around “Not good.”

The outfield production has been terrible. Relying on young outfielders like Evan Carter and Wyatt Langford was a much greater risk than anyone wanted to acknowledge. Adolis Garcia is having a below-average season, at best.

The hitting against the sub .500 Pirates, who did not trot out All-Star Paul Skenes against Texas, was putrid. The Rangers were shutout in Game 2 of the series, and only avoided doing it again in the third game when Langford hit the game-winning RBI in the bottom of the ninth.

Rangers manager Bruce Bochy has been through this not once, not twice, but thrice. When he led the San Francisco Giants to World Series titles in 2010, ‘12 and ‘14, the team followed those seasons by missing the playoffs the next year. The club finished with a losing record once after those titles.

He is 69, and has one year remaining on his original three-year deal. There is no sign that he will leave before that deal ends.

There is also no sign the Rangers will suddenly flip this season to reach .500.

They’re the defending World Series champions who are having a bad year, and their GM is sick of it.