With a successful final week of the season, the Texas Rangers will return to the postseason for the first time since 2023.
It all comes down to this. As the 2026 Major League Baseball season enters its final week, the Texas Rangers are in position to clinch a playoff berth for the first time since their 2023 World Series title.
Texas will welcome the New York Mets for a three-game series starting Tuesday before traveling to take on the Minnesota Twins over the weekend in what could be their biggest regular-season series in two years.
Entering play this week, the Rangers sit atop the American League West with a one-game lead over the rival Houston Astros. The magic number for Texas to clinch the division is six, and doing so would bring their first division title since 2016.
Rangers manager Skip Schumaker knows that if his team is to win the AL West, it all starts with starting pitching, as it always does.
“It starts with starting pitching; hopefully we can get some more length out of the starting pitching and not have to go with four or five innings in the bullpen each time,” Schumaker said.
“However, having said that, it’s just kinda where we’re at in the season; it’s just kinda matching up as best you can. I think a lot of teams are going to be doing it to try to get in, but for our team specifically, it’s seeing what the health is of our starting pitching and going from there; that’s a daily thing.”
As has been the case for the better part of the last week or so, Texas won’t really have a true rotation order or even a true rotation at this point. As the Rangers have described it, the pitching situation remains “all hands on deck” for the rest of the way.
When it comes to the offense, Schumaker is impressed by what he’s seeing from his team’s at-bat quality.
“I know we didn’t score a ton of runs [on Sunday], but I really, really like the at-bats that I’m seeing,” he said.
“We’ve been playing good defense, so hopefully we can get healthy, it’s a much-needed day off like it was in Arizona after that series. These guys have almost a 48-hour break with the day game and hopefully will come back refreshed on Tuesday."
Safe to say this is the most important week of baseball the Rangers have played since November 2023. A good week, and they’re going to be competing for a title; a bad week, and they’re going to be packing up their lockers.
