Texas Rangers All-Star in Tough Battle Against Father Time To Start Season

Can a Texas Rangers veteran All-Star get back on track and hold off Father Time for at least one more season?

Apr 17, 2025; Arlington, Texas, USA; Texas Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien (2) follows through on his single against the Los Angeles Angels during the first inning at Globe Life Field. | Jim Cowsert-Imagn Images

There have been several Texas Rangers players who have struggled over the first month of the season.

Designated hitter Joc Pederson hasn’t come close to meeting expectations after being signed in free agency, going through a 0-for-41 slump. First baseman Jake Burger has yet to find his power stroke with three home runs, a .174/.207/.326 slash line and -0.7 WAR. But the player whom people are most concerned about is second baseman Marcus Semien.

An All-Star the last two years, he is in the midst of a concerning drop in production through his first 111 plate appearances of 2025.

Semien has a .150/.216/.220 slash line with two home runs and one double, putting up a head-turning 29 OPS+ and -0.8 WAR.

In his age-34 campaign, a significant drop in production of that nature is going to raise some eyebrows.

Is Father Time catching up to the veteran, leading to the steep decline in his numbers?

As David Schoenfield of ESPN pointed out, slumps like this aren’t new for Semien. But given his age, it is fair to wonder if he will bounce back like he has done previously.

“Semien has gone through these types of spells before -- remember, in his first year in Texas in 2022, he began the season without a home run in 43 games -- but when you're 34 years old, slumps take on a different view,” he wrote, naming the Rangers second baseman as the most disappointing player at the position in the league.

The raw numbers are alarming, but there are some underlying metrics that provide a little bit of optimism that things will eventually even out and regress positively to the mean.

Semien has always had bat speed metrics on the lower side, but those have remained stable thus far in 2025.

From that perspective, Father Time has not yet caught up to him in that regard.

The more concerning thing is he's hitting ground balls at the highest rate of his career at 41.3%. But on the flip side, he is hitting fly balls at a near career-high rate of 36.3%; only 2021 when he had a fly ball rate of 36.7% was higher.

Where the optimism lies is that part of his struggles can be attributed to bad luck.

His batting average on balls in play heading into play on April 28 is .167. The league average is .296 and his career average is .281.

It is only a matter of time until he gets some positive regression and his numbers start to tick up.

But, the concerns about his power being sapped do appear legitimate.

His ISO of .070 does not paint a great picture, which is less than half of his career number of .183.

Texas needs him to get going in some facet to help an offense that is averaging an MLB-low 3.07 runs per game get on track.