Texas Rangers Slugger’s Slow Start: Analyzing the Causes of His Early Struggles

The Texas Rangers have been off to a slow start offensively, and two of their key veterans have been at the center of this disappointing showing.

Apr 13, 2025; Seattle, Washington, USA; Texas Rangers first baseman Jake Burger (21) stands at second base during a fifth inning mound visit by the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park. / Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images

The Texas Rangers are off to an intriguing start in 2025, sitting at 9-7 which is good for second place in the American League West behind the Los Angeles Angels. The pitching from this squad has usually been outstanding through the first few weeks, but the offensive side of things has been absolutely abysmal outside a few strong run-scoring innings.

When looking at their batting averages, three notable names stand off the page, Joc Pederson, Marcus Semien and Jake Burger, all of whom sit well below the Mendoza Line at .070, .123 and .151 respectively. These three players are all vital to the offense, and it is extremely surprising that they have had so much difficulty kicking off the season, especially the latter two who had relatively solid 2024 seasons for the Rangers.

Burger is one of the most surprising developments in 2025, as he has truly struggled to maintain any resemblance of consistent offensive production through 15 games played. Currently slashing .151/.182/.302, he has shown some slight flashes in slugging, but his efficiency is nonexistent, which is heavily the product of missing the sweet-spot on pitches and struggling to square up to certain pitch types.

In fact, according to Baseball Savant, his biggest difficulty this season has been hitting the heater, with a .074 batting average on fastballs, with his only two hits of the year on them being his two home runs. A more notable issue however has been against breaking pitches, where he is whiffing 46.9% of the time on 74 pitches seen, which is a pretty staggering amount.

His quality of contact has seen drastic changes compared to 2024 as well, with his weak contact percentage going up from 3.6% in 2024 to 7.9% so far this year. It seems one of the more notable issues has been missing the sweet spot, as can be seen by a 13th percentile launch angle sweet spot rating, and significant increases in both getting on top of or under the ball in his swing compared to prior years.

He is doing an enormous amount of first-pitch swinging too, on 49.1% of occasions he will swing for the first pitch of an at-bat, compared to 41.0% last year and a career 41.7% average. This is getting him behind early in counts, and forcing him to have a swing rate of 56.7% as opposed to 53.2% average.

The biggest thing he is going to need to do in the coming weeks is improve his plate vision, and work to start taking first pitches a little more often when possible. If he can improve on those two parts of his game, the rest will come to him as offense revolves around making consistent contact and seeing pitches well.

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