ARLINGTON – The obvious narrative on the Rangers’ decision to send struggling Jake Burger to the minor leagues is this: Chris Young wasn’t going to be as patient with offensive struggles as he was a year ago.
Allow us to suggest another. This is, in fact, all about patience.
If one thing is clear about the first 20% of the Rangers season, it’s that the offense has not functioned as designed. It was designed to have a string of high OBP guys at the top with sluggers cha-cha-cha-ing to the plate like they were facing Bugs Bunny afterwards. If anything else is clear, it’s that the expected lineup has yet to take the field together. And it won’t until both Evan Carter and Burger are both in the lineup. The idea is to have everybody in the best possible place when that time comes.
And to this point, they have played all but five of their first 32 games without at least one of Josh Jung, Wyatt Langford or Corey Seager. That’s not an excuse. Nor has Young allowed it to be one. But something doesn’t have to be an excuse to actually be a factor.
Anyway, the idea is that the lineup is inching closer to being at full strength for the first time. Seager, on the IL for the last nine days with a hamstring strain, could be activated on Saturday. Carter, who has been making adjustments to his stance to better manage the load on his back, reached in the first 18 games he played for Triple-A Round Rock and, just as importantly, he had started six of the last seven games, suggesting he’s better able to manage the workload. Could he be ready in a week? It’s very possible.
Sending Burger out is an attempt to give him a more low-pressure opportunity to reset his mind, as much as anything. If you look at “process” stats, Burger’s exit velocity, launch angle and hard-hit rate aren’t tremendously askew from last year. Nor is his chase rate tremendously out of line from where it was in 2024.
But his first-pitch swing rate is up and his walk rate is down. He’s not getting ahead in counts. At this point last year, 25.4% of the pitches he saw came when he was ahead in the count. Forced pitchers to throw more fastballs. He clobbered them. Had a slugging percentage of 1.100 for the first month in those situations. This year: It’s 19.4%. He’s hitting .182 with just a .318 slug. He’s been overanxious early in at-bats and paid the price the rest of the way.
It was pretty clear after Wednesday’s game, when Burger went 0 for 5 with four strikeouts, that, as the year has gone on, he’s started doing more guessing than attacking.
Of one strikeout, in particular, with runners on base, Burger’s answer reeked of a guy stuck in between being normally aggressive and having enough doubt that he’s gotten passive.
“In that at-bat, I got a little juicy and got over aggressive,” Burger said. “And then I may have been a little passive. I think sometimes you kind of get in your own way. Sometimes with two strikes, you back it up and then you back it up too much and you are walking back to the dugout.
“I am probably trying to do too much subconsciously. … I know why I’m here and why I’m in this organization now. I think you have a tendency when you’re scuffling a little bit to try to prove [things] to people.”
Burger has bitten off a lot in his time with the Rangers. He’s been very open about raising a newborn with Down Syndrome and wanting to contribute to the community. He is no doubt aware that the player he replaced, Nathaniel Lowe, has gotten off to a fine start in Washington. With the rest of the offense not functioning as planned, as one of the newcomers, he’s only put more pressure on himself. It was not getting results.
It was time to do something in the short term to help fix the long-term vision. Take a little pressure off. Allow Burger to work on fine-tuning without having to worry he wasn’t carrying his share of the load. In the meantime, Blaine Crim, who has worked his way through the Rangers’ organization as a hitter, will get a much-deserved callup to the big leagues. It would be unfair to consider Crim a potential savior for the offense or a long-term replacement for Burger, but it is about demonstrating that perseverance can pay off.
If Crim, more patient at the plate, can help “move the line,” as Bruce Bochy says, it would be critical for the offense right now. It may help the Rangers navigate the next 10 days or two weeks better.
At that point, there will still be 75% of the season remaining. Plenty of time for a beefy offense to beat up on opponents.
So, while it’s easy to glom on to the narrative that Young had to do “something, anything” to get the offense moving, it’s not about being impatient. It’s about having enough patience to say, there is plenty of time left, but the offense must first re-calibrate itself.
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