Fantasy Baseball Year in Review – Texas Rangers

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  • By Chris Houston

    Last Updated on October 9, 2025 5:46 pm by Paul Williamson | Published: October 9, 2025

    Entering the 2025 season, I expected the Texas Rangers to be a very flawed ball club, and I was right. I was wrong, however, about the nature of that flaw. I expected the pitching to be suspect, both the starters and the bullpen, but the starters were great and the bullpen was fairly solid for the majority of the season. The flaw, it turned out, would prove to be the offense, the offense I had erroneously anticipated would be the team’s greatest strength, ended up being its greatest weakness.

    Catcher

    Jonah Heim entered the 2025 season coming off a down 2024. Heim slashed a career-best .258/.317/.438 with 18 home runs, 61 runs scored, 95 RBI, a .324 wOBA and a 107 wRC+ over 501 plate appearances in 2023, cementing his status as a top-20 fantasy catcher, only, in 2024, to regress to a .220/.267/.336 slash-line, with 13 homers, 45 runs scored, 59 RBI, a .265 wOBA and a 72 wRC+ in 491 plate appearances. After that, the Rangers decided that giving their backstop 500 PAs a year might be a bit too much for him to handle, so they signed Kyle Higashioka during the off-season, vowing to decrease Heim’s workload behind the plate, as he would now operate in more of a time share situation. It didn’t work out that way, unfortunately.

    First, Higashioka got off to an extremely slow start at the plate, so Heim still saw most of the catcher reps early on, and second, the former Athletic, for the second year in a row, was simply not very good himself, posting a .213/.271/.332 triple-slash with just 11 homers, 38 runs scored, 43 RBI, a .266 wOBA and a 69 wRC+ in 433 plate appearances–bad enough to be the 34th ranked catcher on the Fangraph’s Fantasy Player Rater. Higashioka, who was at least able to somewhat turn his season around in the second half, finished with a .241/.291/.403 slash-line and 11 homers in 327 plate appearances, resulting in him ultimately proving to be the club’s best offensive catcher (ranked 24 on the Fangraph’s Fantasy Player Rater). Higashioka may be the Rangers’ backstop to roster going into 2026, if he can stay healthy.

    First base

    2025 Jake Burger was a remarkably unsatisfying Burger, slashing a mere .236/.269/.419 with 16 home runs and 53 RBI. Part of the disappointment lied in the drop in plate appearances–down from 579, in 2024, to 376 this year–but the drop was partially due to his poor performance, which led to him being demoted to Triple-A in the beginning of May. But the infielder also dealt with various injuries throughout the season, including a left oblique strain, a left quad strain and a left wrist sprain (Seriously, what’s wrong with the left side of this guy’s body?), all of which led to IL stints. The wrist injury, in particular, managed to linger, resulting in him requiring surgery this off-season ‘to repair a torn tendon sheath’ in the troublesome wrist.

    As one of the Rangers big off-season signings, the club entered the 2025 season expecting big things from Burger, who was coming off an average, the previous two seasons, of 31.5 homers per year with a .250 batting average. And supposedly the big guy would finally be in a better lineup. Blah, blah, blah. None of that panned out. The Rangers offense as a whole was bad and Burger, most likely as a result of all the injuries, was not good either, posting a .295 wOBA and just an 89 wRC+. Perhaps Burger can bounce back next season, but with him being on a one year deal, if he does, it’ll probably for a different club.

    Second base

    “Marcus Semien is cooked” was a popular refrain by fantasy managers for a large portion of the year, just to let you know how the veteran second baseman’s 2025 went. From the start of the season, through May 28, Semien slashed an abysmal .173/.260/.224 with just three home runs, a 21.5% strikeout rate, .051 ISO, .226 wOBA and 42 wRC+. Bleak stuff. But on May 30, something apparently clicked for the veteran and he suddenly went nuts, going 4-for-4 at the plate with a homer, three runs scored, three RBI and a steal. From that point on, Semien seemed to find his footing and began the difficult work of trying to salvage what up to that point had been a career-worse season, slashing a much more respectable .270/.338/.464 with 12 homers, 15 doubles, eight steals, a 14.5% strikeout rate, .193 ISO, .344 wOBA and 123 wRC+ from then until August 21.

    What happened on August 21 then, you ask. Good question! Well, on August 21, Mister Semien fouled a ball off his left foot during his first at-bat and had to exit the contest early with a foot contusion. He was eventually placed on the injured list and subsequently diagnosed with a Lisfranc sprain. That proved to be the end of his season, as Semien would aim for a possible return during the playoffs, but the Rangers did not make the playoffs, and thus Semien was shut down for the remainder of the season. It remains to be seen how the 35-year-old will look next season. Will he prove to be, in fact, “cooked,” or will he pick up where he left off prior to sustaining the foot injury in August? Only time will tell.

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    October 9, 2025, 5:46 pm