Rangers fans won't like Bleacher Report's trade deadline assessment for Texas

After a tough four game losing streak, the Texas Rangers find themselves in an unfortunate situation. Being eight games out of the division and seven spots out of the final Wild Card spot with 81 games to play, the team's trade deadline plan is as uncertain as ever.

With all but three teams in the entire league within eight games of a playoff spot, it is as competitive as ever. Which makes the Rangers' decision to buy or sell that much trickier.

A recent article from Bleacher Report elaborated upon a buy or sell assignment for each team. For the Rangers, they suggest a light sell with most of their impact pieces coming off the injured list rather than from another team's roster. That's a fair assessment for a team that just got Max Scherzer backand is going to return Jacob Degrom, Josh Jung, Tyler Mahle, and Evan Carter in the near future. But fans can't be thrilled about the prospect of hobbled players picking up this struggling roster.

The optimistic Rangers fan in all of us wants to say that Texas will go on an unprecendented hot streak and soar to the top of the division for another playoff run. However, at this point in the season it's much more likely that they either grab a wild card spot or miss out on the playoffs completely. So is it smarter to risk future assets for one-year rentals, or retool and focus on 2025 whilst remaining competitve in 2024? The latter is the safest.

So what pieces do the Rangers have that could be attractive to other squads? Well, in terms of players whose contract is set to expire after this season there's David Robertson, Kirby Yates, Andrew Heaney, Jose Leclerc, Michael Lorenzen, Max Scherzer, Jose Ureña, Andrew Knizner, Robbie Grossman, and Travis Jankowski.

Of those, the players that would warrant the biggest return would be, Robertson, Yates, Leclerc, Lorenzen, and Scherzer. These pitchers are definitely not in the long-term plans for Texas, all being well over 30 except for Leclerc, so it's not out of the question they could be dealt. Unfortunately, these are five very trusted arms on the Rangers staff, and losing any one of them would make it extremely difficult to compete.

One thing you can bet on is if the Rangers are anywhere near the playoff hunt come the end of July, Chris Young and the rest of management will do their absolute best to make this team better. Regardless of what happens, with young pieces like Evan Carter, Wyatt Langford, Josh Jung, etc., the Rangers are poised to compete for years to come, sellers or not.