With Spring Training kicking off, there are plenty of roster and lineup projections for opening day. I believe the only questions for this Spring for the team is about Justin Foscue and Wyatt Langford. Foscue will almost certainly make the team out of camp and Langford will have to prove more that he deserves to make the team. With that being said, I will try my best to project the lineup for the last month/game of the season.
- Evan Carter CF
- Marcus Semien 2B
- Corey Seager SS
- Adolis Garcia RF
- Wyatt Langford LF
- Nathaniel Lowe 1B
- Josh Jung 3B
- Justin Foscue DH
- Jonah Heim C
Evan Carter has shown elite plate discipline and a great ability to make the pitchers work more than usual by throwing a lot of pitches. He will have to improve drastically against LHP to be able to keep ahold of the lead off duties every day or else Leody Taveras could get the start in CF and hit 9th instead. The good news is in the scenario that Carter can only face RHP, he will still get the bulk of the at-bats. I would not be surprised if he ends the year close to a .370-.400 OBP. Combine that with his elite speed and he ends up being one of the most ideal lead off hitters possible.
Marcus Semien transformed his game from 2022 to 2023. Aside from 2019, he has never really hit the ball that hard. In 2023 he still didn’t hit the ball hard, averaging an 88.4 average exit velocity which ranked in the 32nd percentile of all hitters. He combats his relatively weak contact by pulling the ball in the air, as well as cutting down on his swing and miss. His whiff percentage dropped by over 2% from 20.6% to 18% in 2023. The thing he improved on a lot, like many Rangers, was his plate discipline. He went from a 24.8% chase rate in 2022 to a 21.4% in 2023. This helped him draw more walks and get better pitches to hit, making him a much better table setter than the year before. I expect him to perform similarly in 2024.
Corey Seager undoubtedly had the best season from a Rangers shortstop ever not named Alex Rodriguez. He only played in 119 games and still racked up 33 HR’s and a 6.9 bWAR. If you were to try to poke a hole in his offensive game it’s that maybe you’d want him to walk more? He still walks at a slightly above average rate with a 9.1% BB rate. It’s also harder to walk when you swing over half the time at the first pitch of the at-bat. Also, walks matter less if you can hit .327 like Seager did in 2023. Even with his “walk issue” he had a .390 OBP which ranked 3rd in the American League. Barring any injuries, there is no reason to believe that he can’t put up around a .900 OPS.
Adolis Garcia is undoubtedly the Rangers biggest spark plug. He had his best season to date last year. He set a career high in runs, home runs, RBI, OBP, SLG, OPS, and OPS+. El Bombi capped off his season with a performance in the 2023 ALCS that Ranger fans will never forget and grew his legend in Game 1 of the World Series with an extra inning walk-off HR. His biggest change was he was able to lay off more bad pitches, still below league average, and he also went from being well below average against sliders to absolutely demolishing them in 2023. He had a .188 average and .326 slugging percentage against sliders in 2022 and improved to a .272 average and .552 slugging in 2023. He still hits the ball very hard as well with a 92.1 average exit velocity. With his revamped approach and elite quality of contact he should hopefully be close to what he was in 2023.
It’s still a shock that Langford fell to the Rangers with the 4th overall pick in last year’s draft. He may very well be the best prospect the Rangers have ever had in recent memory. Between MLB.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Baseball America the lowest he’s ranked in the top 100 prospect rankings is 6th. After posting a 1.282 OPS in his junior year at Florida, Langford was able to play 44 games in the Rangers minor league system. The reason it isn’t clarified what level he played at is because he climbed from rookie ball all the way to AAA. He even had people questioning if he would make the postseason roster for the Rangers. In those 44 games he slashed .360/.480/.6771.157. Those numbers are only slightly below what he put up in his sophomore season when he really broke out in college, and they were against much better competition. There is a decent chance that he makes the team out of camp, and if he doesn’t he will have to prove it a little bit more for maybe a month in the minors before getting the call. No one would be surprised if he comes up and dominates and is hitting in the middle of the order for the team that won the first team American League Silver Slugger.
Coming off his first Silver Slugger in 2022, Lowe had a somewhat disappointing season in 2023. His tough September brought down his great season that he was having up to that point. Through the end of August Lowe had a .282 average and .823 OPS. He unfortunately struggled to a .160 average and .560 OPS in September that really dragged his overall season numbers down to a .262 average and .775 OPS. Those numbers, while respectable, are a bit below what teams expect from their first baseman. If he can perform like he did in 2022 or the first five months of 2023 the Rangers will be thrilled. Having him sandwiched between Langford and Jung feels perfect, because he’s breaking up a string of right handed pitchers and Jung destroys left-handed pitchers so it will make managers have to decide which one of them they would rather face with their stronger matchup.
If Jung hadn’t gotten injured in August, he surely would have at least been a rookie of the year candidate. He had an .813 OPS with 22 HR’s through August 6th and didn’t come back until September 18th. Once he was back he took a bit to re-acclimate himself. Similarly to Lowe, Jung struggled in September to a .196 average and a .515 OPS. Once they playoffs started he thankfully looked like himself again. Through the Rangers World Series run Jung slashed .308/.329/.538/.867 and was a huge part of the reason the Rangers won it all. Expect another step forward for the young third baseman in 2024.
Foscue was the Rangers first round pick in 2020 and has produced every year in the minors since. Unfortunately for him, he has been blocked at every position so he will most likely have to prove himself at DH to start the season. He has displayed elite control of the strike zone with a career on-base percentage of .380 in the minors. He has great bat to ball skills as well, shown by the fact that he walks more than he strikes out. Last year he posted an .862 OPS in 122 games for Round Rock. Expect him to come up and be at least a slightly above average contributor to the big league club.
Heim had his big breakout last year with his first all-star appearance and cementing himself as a top 10 catcher in the game. The bad news for him, but good news for the team, is that the lineup is so long that the starting catcher for the American League in the all-star game last year could be hitting 9th by the end of the season. His big jump last year can be partially credited to him increasing his line drive rate by 6% and decreasing his pulled ball rate from 41.1% to 35.2%. He hit way more line drives up the middle and in the gaps for base hits and doubles leading to a big increase in production. Hopefully he will be able to replicate and build off of his breakout season and help the Rangers to another playoff berth.
