Rangers Star Wyatt Langford's Season Ends Due To Injury

Now out of the postseason hunt, the Texas Rangers will be without Wyatt Langford for the remainder of the season.

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The Texas Rangers were eliminated from playoff contention after Tuesday's loss, which marked eight defeats in a row. They have now missed the playoffs in each of the past two seasons since winning the 2023 World Series.

Without their best players in Corey Seager and Marcus Semien, the Rangers just could not stay in the race. There is optimism for next year, though, as everyone will hopefully be healthy going into the season and players like Jack Leiter can take another step forward.

In the meantime, Texas will finish their season off against the Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Guardians as they try to close on a stronger note than an eight-game losing streak. But achieving that just got a little more difficult, as the team announced on Wednesday that star outfield Wyatt Langford was placed on the injured list with a strained left oblique.

Langford’s Breakout Season Is Cut a Few Games Short

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With the team no longer in contention, there's no reason for the outfielder to push the injury any further. He and the team should want him to be ready to go next year.

Although Langford had a solid rookie season, he really took it to another level this year. He will wind up playing the exact same amount of games (134), but all of his numbers are up. He set career highs in home runs (22), stolen bases (22), walks (74), OPS (.775) and OPS+ (126). All of that combined made for a 5.4 bWAR season, up from 3.9 in the same amount of games last year.

Langford also took a big step forward in terms of his batted ball data. According to Baseball Savant, his hard hit rate went from 43.3% to 48.4% (82nd percentile). He also upped his barrel rate from 9.3% to 14% in his second season. He chased a little less and bumped his walk rate by 3.7%.

He really elevated each part of his game, and he'll likely get another boost from the new ABS challenge system coming in 2026. If he continues his year-over-year progress, he could become a bona fide superstar by the end of next season.

In the corresponding moves, Texas transferred outfielder Sam Haggerty to the 60-day injurd list from the 10-day IL. They also selected the contract of outfielder Billy McKinney, who is an eight-year veteran with a career .667 OPS and 34 homers. He last played for the Rangers in July of this season.