Jake Burger’s nightmare first year with Rangers ends with surgery

Jake Burger's first season with the Texas Rangers has been one disaster after another.

Traded to an AL West contender in the offseason, the first baseman had a 2025 campaign that was a combination of underperformance and injuries. Now his offseason is injury-riddled as well. Burger started the postseason with surgery on his wrist. The hope is that he'll be 100% by Spring Training.

Jake Burger's bad 2025 season gets worse

Burger, who broke a 2-for-28 skid with a two-run single in the third inning of the season finale, confirmed with The Dallas Morning News Sunday that he will have surgery later this week to repair a torn tendon sheath in his left wrist, a lingering issue from an injury he sustained in mid-August, only days after he'd returned from an injured list stint.

The wrist was just one of the physical problems he went through in 2025. He went to the IL three times with oblique, quadriceps, and wrist injuries. Burger received a cortisone injection for the wrist injury, which gave him some relief. Still, when the anti-inflammatory effects ebbed, he could once again feel the tendon "popping" in and out of place for the final weeks of the season.

Had the Texas Rangers made the playoffs, it's likely that he would have continued to try to play through it. To that end, it's good for Burger that the season is over.

Now the question is just what happens once he's done with the surgery and on the way back. The Rangers are expected to overhaul an underachieving squad. Could Jake Burger be on the move? He'll have to recover quickly and show he's healthy before that happens.