We all believed, along with the Rangers’ front office, that this season was going to be better than the last half dozen. But coming into 2023, it didn’t take a crystal ball to have a good idea of what this July would offer, which is to say it would look a lot like the past few Julys: a very high pick in the amateur draft, an All-Star break, and a pair of Bobblehead nights featuring subjects who were unlikely to be sent away in the season’s busiest trade month (last year: Corey Seager and Marcus Semien; this year: Martin Perez and … Rangers Captain).
Like 2022, this year’s trade deadline doesn’t land until August (the afternoon of the 1st, after falling on the 2nd a year ago)—but this one’s shaping up to be a drastically different affair for the Rangers. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. We’re talking about July. And not unlike the first three months of the season, it has a chance to offer a steady supply of sports adrenaline—and possibly even put a dent in all-Cowboys programming once Dak, Micah, and the boys report to Oxnard during the final week of the month.
July will open with a highly unusual wrap-around four-game series, as the Astros make their first Arlington visit of the season, starting with a meeting on Friday, June 30, and ending with a rare Monday series finale. It has been an unfamiliar year for the defending world champs, who caught fire over a four-week span from May 9 through June 5, going 19-6 … and gaining exactly one game on the division-leading Rangers in the process. Since then, even with Texas slogging through its roughest patch of the season in mid-June, Houston has lost ground, now sitting 5.5 games back and jockeying with the Angels. In any event, the Rangers will start July like they started the previous two months: atop the AL West.
On the Sunday of the series against the Astros, All-Star rosters will be announced, and the AL squad could feature the most Rangers in a decade. The last time the franchise sent more than three players to the Midsummer Classic was 2012, when eight Rangers joined reigning AL pennant-winning manager Ron Washington.
That was also the last time a Ranger started the game. This year, Semien should get the nod at second base (starters will be revealed on June 29), while Seager, Josh Jung, Jonah Heim, and Adolis Garcia are all finalists at their positions and theoretically have a 50-50 shot to start alongside Semien. Regardless, all five are strong bets to be on the roster, and they won’t be alone. Astros manager Dusty Baker will select the AL pitching staff and is sure to include Nathan Eovaldi. Jon Gray and Will Smith have strong cases as well, though it’s worth noting that Baker left Smith off his ALDS and ALCS rosters last fall and then never used him in the World Series.
After the series against Houston, the Rangers head to Boston—where they were swept in four games last year—and NL East cellar-dweller Washington, whose relievers Hunter Harvey and Kyle Finnegan (and maybe C.J. Edwards, if he’s healthy again) could be showcased for the visitors.
But first things first: hours after the Rangers play the series finale against the Nationals, a noon Sunday game, they will go on the clock in the MLB Draft. Fortune has already smiled on the club: the inaugural MLB draft lottery resulted in Texas, which would have slotted seventh under previous draft procedures, landing the fourth pick. That’s key, not only because it increases the Rangers’ bonus pool by roughly $1.5 million, but also because the top tier of this year’s draft, according to virtually every mock draft out there, includes five players: the LSU tandem of outfielder Dylan Crews and righty Paul Skenes and Florida outfielder Wyatt Langford, who are facing off in the College World Series championship series, and high school outfielders Walker Jenkins and Max Clark. The Rangers expect their run of picking in the top half of the draft—as they have every year since 2018—to be over for the foreseeable future; but because of the luck of the lottery, they are in position to draft one of those five.
Day 2 of the draft (rounds 3-10) will take place on Monday, July 10, the first day of the All-Star break. Just like in 2022, the Rangers won’t make their second pick until the fourth round, having forfeited their second- and third-round selections when they signed Jacob deGrom and Eovaldi, respectively. It worked out just fine last year; despite having no second- or third-round pick due to the Seager and Semien signings, they manipulated their bonus allotment by selecting Kumar Rocker, who was willing to take an under-slot deal in the first round, and using the savings to land fellow right-hander Brock Porter in the fourth. Whether the Rangers attempt something as risky again this year—there was no guarantee Porter would slide through the 105 picks that followed the Rocker selection—is anybody’s guess. But being positioned just inside what is the top talent tier instead of just outside it is just one of a stack of huge positives for the organization in 2023.
The All-Star Game will be played on July 11, hours after the draft concludes with rounds 11 through 20 (territory that in recent years brought the Rangers legitimate prospects like Joe Barlow, Marc Church, and Blaine Crim). Then comes a massive nine-game homestand, both in duration—it’s the club’s longest of the year—and the marquee nature of opponents like the Guardians, Rays, and Dodgers, all of whom should still be in contention.
The Rangers’ headliner fight card then continues with road sets in Houston—the timetable for slugger Yordan Alvarez’s return from an oblique injury should have him back in action just in time—and San Diego. That series ends with a Sunday afternoon affair on the 30th, and the club has the next day off. It stands to be a day GM Chris Young will spend exchanging texts and phone calls, in a much different vein from last year for a couple of reasons.
First, this will be the first trade deadline Young oversees; he was second in charge in 2022 until Jon Daniels was relieved of his duties on August 17. Second, he will have a diametrically opposite endgame. Last summer, Daniels was hunting opportunities to flip reliever Matt Bush and bench bat Brad Miller while listening on Martin Perez and Matt Moore (though there were thoughts of extending the two lefties instead). They completed just one deal: Bush to the Brewers for depth infielder Mark Mathias and minor-league lefty Antoine Kelly.
This year, as the calendar flips to August, assuming there’s no July collapse, Young will have added a frontline starting pitcher and a couple of late-inning relievers in trades, or he’ll still be working the phones for one final day. The Rangers will also be looking at a softer schedule in August. And they probably will have gotten one of the amateur outfielders, Langford or Jenkins or Clark, in a minor-league lineup as long as it didn’t take all the way up to the August 1 deadline to get that draftee signed.
By then, we’ll be a week and a half away from the Cowboys’ preseason opener. But for the first time in seven years, happily, we shouldn’t be sports-desperate for it.
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