MIAMI — In their not-quite .500 horsepower buggy, the Texas Rangers will reach the statistical midpoint of the season and what can be said of them? Better question: What can be said that hasn’t been said 100 times already? Which is a lot, considering the midpoint of the season is only Game 81. But the problem that existed in a 4-2 loss to the Miami Marlins on Wednesday and all series deep ...

Wyatt Langford of the Texas Rangers runs the bases after hitting a home run in the fourth inning during a game against the Miami Marlins at loanDepot park on Wednesday, June 24, 2026, in Miami.

Saul Martinez/Getty Images North America/TNS

MIAMI — In their not-quite .500 horsepower buggy, the Texas Rangers will reach the statistical midpoint of the season and what can be said of them?

Better question: What can be said that hasn’t been said 100 times already?

Which is a lot, considering the midpoint of the season is only Game 81.

But the problem that existed in a 4-2 loss to the Miami Marlins on Wednesday and all series deep inside the echoing hollowness of loanDepot Park are the problems that have haunted them all year. For three years, in fact. Want a precise moment they started: Go check the security cams after the World Series parade when they started sweeping away the glitter strips. Since then, the offense has been uninteresting, unoriginal and unproductive.

The Rangers managed a pair of solo homers Wednesday, equal to the number of runners they had thrown out on the bases and greater than the number of at-bats they had with runners in scoring position. They went 0 for 1 with RISP on Wednesday, 2 for 17 in the Miami series and are 6 for 32 (.188) since that big first inning rally against San Diego a week ago. Which about sums it: Once a week or so, the offense manages to pummel a pitcher. The rest of the time, everything else about the club has to be perfect in order to win.

“I think we're better than what we've shown,” said manager Skip Schumaker, who has to say these kinds of things. “I think we have, at times, found different ways to win games and not just relied on slug.

“We haven't hit our stride yet. We should be more consistent as an offense. We have a lot of guys that are above league average in OPS. So, the tough part to figure out is we’ve got the OPS, but not the crooked number innings. At the end of the day, runs scored matter. We haven’t scored enough runs. We’ve had a lot of traffic, but haven’t scored a lot of runs. I still feel like we are going to get going. We just haven’t done it yet.”

The Rangers have had a decent amount of baserunners, sure, though not on Wednesday. They managed four singles, two homers and no walks against fresh-off-the-IL Eury Perez and a battalion of relievers.

Factually speaking, they just have been the worst in baseball at safe driving – getting all that traffic home safely. According to Baseball Reference, the Rangers turn a baserunner into a run 27% of the time, a full 10% below league average. The net effect is this: With two runs on Wednesday, the Rangers runs per game dropped to 3.99, which is the fourth-worst in baseball.

The Rangers believed the offense would improve when Wyatt Langford and Corey Seager returned from IL stints. Seager, of course, followed one IL stint with another, but could return on Thursday. Langford, who homered Wednesday, has slashed .306/.367/.611/.978 since his return and the Rangers are still 8-10. Why? At the same time, both Josh Jung and Ezequiel Duran, who carried the offense for the first two months, have cooled off. Moral of the story: It’s hard to get all nine hitters on a heater simultaneously, and if that’s what the Rangers are hoping for, well, hope isn’t exactly a strategy.

The Rangers failed to make Perez work on Wednesday, even though he was going to be on a limited pitch count. A night earlier, though, the Rangers were all over the bases, just failing to make anything matter in big opportunities. They had two on and no outs in the first inning and didn’t score. They had the bases loaded and no outs in the second inning and managed one run. They rank last in the majors in bases-loaded OPS at .496; their OBP alone in those moments is .208. They have performed like a team that freezes when the moment is biggest and when the pressure should shift completely to the pitcher.

So, it all leads to this one question: Is inefficiency fixable?

“We have to stick to the approach that we had with nobody on base,” said hitting coach Justin Viele, the third guy to head up the hitting department in the last three years. “I think there's just times where we get guys on and our approach changes. We’ve got to keep it consistent, lno matter what the situation is.

“We message that every day, but we have to be a little bit less pitchable with men on. I think we turn very swing happy with guys on base and try to do too much. A walk with men on base is good, too. There is individual conversation with guys, like, ‘nobody has to be the hero right now; we just need gritty at-bats like those that got us baserunners.”

It all sounds good. The Rangers have said it with different voices for three different seasons. Nothing has changed.

It might just be who they are. It's hard to argue anything else.

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