Texas Rangers: FanGraphs predicts another October-less year

We get it.

2021 is going to suck for Texas Rangers baseball, right?

First, MLB.com’s initial power rankings for the season placed the Rangers at 28th overall back in January.

More recently, Baseball Prospectus released their annual PECOTA projections, which have the team winning a gnarly 67 games in 2021.

Saying this team will not be good this year would seem to be an understatement of massive proportions.

Of course, the buck didn’t stop with PECOTA.

On Tuesday, FanGraphs released their postseason probabilities for every team in baseball.

Guess what the Texas Rangers’ number was?

The Texas Rangers have slim odds of making the playoffs in 2021, to no one’s surprise.

If you guessed 0%, you would’ve been awfully close.

Fortunately (we suppose), FanGraphs doesn’t think the Texas Rangers should be completely excluded from the playoff picture in 2021, assigning the team a 0.8% chance to make the postseason!

Hey, at least that’s not the worst odds in baseball!

We would hate to be the Baltimore Orioles in this projection, who according to FanGraphs, have no shot to sneak into the dance in 2021.

The Rangers also have better odds of reaching the postseason than the Colorado Rockies, Pittsburgh Pirates and the Miami Marlins this year.

Take “better odds” with a grain of salt, of course, because the Rockies, Pirates and Marlins aren’t exactly a murderer’s row of ballclubs.

At the end of the day, no reasonable Texas Ranger fan should have expected a different outcome than the one presented above by FanGraphs.

While it’s far from ideal to admit this harrowing reality, the good news is that the future seems to be bright in Arlington, so long as fans are willing to be patient.

Patience is a concept that is easier said than done, though.

Nonetheless, 2021 will be plenty important for the Texas Rangers, as they look to secure another top-five selection in 2022 and further fortify their farm system with elite talent, while seeing their developing studs make strides in the years to come.