The Rangers are Reeling After Dropping Five Straight—And It Only Gets Tougher Next Week

After climbing back from a 3-8 start to get to 10-9, the Texas Rangers have dropped five straight after being swept in a four-game, home-and-home series with the San Diego Padres.

If that wasn't unsettling enough, the Rangers will host the Oakland Athletics for four games and Los Angeles Dodgers for three games in a homestand beginning on Monday. In case you aren't aware of the standings, these are the teams that own the two best records in all of baseball heading into Friday's slate of games.

Needless to say, the three-game series in Seattle this weekend is awfully important.

However, the writing may already be on the wall. Even if the Rangers sweep the Mariners this weekend, they'll still be a game under .500. Then the Rangers have to hope for a split with Oakland and taking two of three from the Dodgers.

Even someone as optimistic as myself would scoff at that possibility given the current state of the team. The offense is still figuring it out after 24 games, the defense continues to cost the team way too many runs, and the starting rotation is Lance Lynn and everyone else—which is somehow worse than the 2019 rotation.

When the Rangers begin their homestand on Monday, it will be exactly one week prior to the August 31 trade deadline. In other words, next week is the time to put up or shut up if they want to avoid selling. Rangers President of Baseball Operations and General Manager Jon Daniels will likely be getting a plethora of calls and texts inquiring about their ace Lance Lynn.

Lynn is one of the frontrunners for the American League Cy Young award. With another year left on his contract after this year, he may potentially be the most sought after piece by contending teams—and could bring quite the return for a Rangers team that may still be a couple of years from possibly climbing back into the postseason conversation again. Lynn will have two more starts before the trade deadline, which is helpful for the Rangers in their effort to salvage the season. If they fail in next week's homestand, Daniels may field an offer he can't refuse for the 33-year-old hurler.

Then if the Rangers sell Lynn, how far do they go? Will Daniels test the market for a return for Joey Gallo? Very few would want to see Gallo go, but he only has two years of arbitration left and the time is coming for the Rangers to decide their future with the slugging outfielder.

With Scott Boras as his agent, a contract extension with Gallo would likely be an expensive one. If the Rangers feel they have a replacement for Gallo in their system and they get an offer that puts the club in a better position to compete in a couple of years, the shrewd move—albeit an unpopular one—may be to pull the trigger.

If the sky begins to fall next week, the Rangers must have all options on the table. I keep referring to the Rangers competing in a couple of years because several of their top prospects will likely be Major League ready at some point in 2022, including Josh Jung, Sam Huff, Leody Taveras, Anderson Tejeda, and maybe more. If 2022 is the year the Rangers decide to go for it, then Lynn won't be a part of that. Gallo very well could be since he'll be entering his age 28 season and in his final year of arbitration. There's a valid argument to keep Gallo to be a piece of that core, which is why it's not a given the Rangers will sell him this year.

All of this may sound little too premature, but that's how much is riding on the next several games. If the Rangers drop the ball in Seattle, the decision to sell may already made before they even make the trip back to Arlington. For all we know, the Rangers could pull of a sweep of Seattle over the weekend and shock us all with some wins against the A's and Dodgers.

However, we have very little reason to believe that will happen. If the Rangers had minor issues in one or two confined areas, then the optimistic scenario I just laid out is not so farfetched. But the talent the Rangers are trotting out every night does not have the makings of a championship team. They're also consistently finding new ways to give away games, including the latest trend of serving up more grand slams than your local Denny's restaurant.

When we look back on the 2020 Rangers season, we will all look back to this dreadful series against the Padres. Not only because the debate over unwritten rules made the Rangers the laughing stock of the baseball world on social media, but it could ultimately be the point where the Rangers may have dug themselves too deep of a hole.

Or maybe, this team just wasn't very good in the first place.

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