Can Rangers Break Run of Average Play or Will They Even Need to Do So?

If it seems like the Texas Rangers have been hovering at or around .500 for the entirety of the 2026 season, it’s because they have.

Texas has been exactly at the .500 mark 20 times this season, the most in all of Major League Baseball.

Seemingly no matter who the Rangers play, this season has felt like a seesaw ride that sometimes goes up, sometimes goes down, but always ends up right back in the middle.

Take the last week and a half, for example. After a 4-2 home stand, Texas took the opening game of a four-game series against the last-place Los Angeles Angels, and it seemed like they were finally going to go on the big run they needed.

However, the Rangers would lose back-to-back contests to the Angels, and now, with a win in Thursday night’s series finale will split the series and, you guessed it… be right back at .500.

The seeming never ending cycle of mediocrity has plagued Texas since winning the World Series in 2023, but this year is different.

As we enter play in the middle of August, the one-game-below- .500 Rangers currently hold a playoff position, which is mind-boggling to most.

What’s even crazier is that Texas is only 1.5 games out of first place in the American League West and still has just as good a shot as ever to win their first division title since 2016, all while playing sub-.500 baseball up to this point.

So all that begs the question: do the Rangers even have to escape their never-ending .500 seesaw to make the postseason?

Technically, they don’t.

At the beginning of the season, when the American League as a whole was off to one of its worst starts in recent history, it seemed far more likely that pattern would break rather than hold.

Months later, and one of the AL’s collective worst starts to a season has, for whatever reason, turned into just one of its worst seasons.

To think a team playing like the Rangers have been all season is right in the thick of the race for a division crown is almost unthinkable, but that’s the AL in 2026.

Perhaps Texas, more than anyone, knows that once you get into the postseason, anything can happen, and they’re firmly in the hunt as the days and weeks of this odd 2026 season come to an end.