The Texas Rangers' offensive struggles of the past two seasons have been very well documented.

When it comes to the 2025 season, it didn’t take a baseball guru to tell you that Texas didn’t do enough little things to score runs.

Over the offseason, Rangers brass made it known they wanted a philosophy shift away from so much slug towards a more at-bat grinding contact-centered approach.

It’s not often that an organization wants to work on something, and you begin to see results in Spring Training, but that’s certainly been the case for the Rangers in early March.

Texas is noticeably producing sacrifice flies and at-bats producing in moving runners over so far this spring.

Oftentimes, things in Spring Training can be consonances, but don’t tell first-year Rangers manager Skip Schumaker that’s the case with this.

“I don’t think so, I don’t believe in consonance, you’ll learn that about me, I don’t believe in those,” Schumaker said. 

Schumaker rather pointed to a shift in what the Rangers have done during batting practice this Spring.

“I do believe that we’re working on situational stuff every day in BP,” Schumaker said. “That’s why I don’t believe in coincidence, I think that when you work on something, usually a result ends up happening one way or the other, mostly in the positive if you’re working on something.

“I think we’re working hard on the situational hitting and putting different ideas in their head during batting practice, not just trying to have a home run derby, so I think that’s the result of what you’re seeing right now,” Schumaker said.

Schumaker knows that you can’t take results from so early into Spring Training, but he is generally encouraged by the signs.

“It’s early in spring, but I like what I’m seeing as far as guys having an idea of what the plan is at the plate,” Schumaker said. “The game for me tells you what you need to do to win, and we’re trying to instill that early on in camp, even if it’s the second inning, if it’s 'get him over and get him in' type of stuff, that’s what we’re trying to put in their minds."

Still, even with the attempted overall offensive shift towards a more contact-centered approach, Schumaker knows there is a time and place for slug, but the team needs to be prepared to do both.

“I’m not going to ask Corey Seager to have a three hopper to second base to get [a guy] over, I’d rather him hit a double into the right-center gap, but it’s just the thought of having team at-bats at certain times of the game because it’s hard to score runs at times,” Schumaker said.

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