Rangers playoff outlook gets darker as season enters final stretch

A lot has been made of the Texas Rangers' playoff chances now that the trade deadline is over. Even with Chris Young making moves that unequivocally improved the team at the deadline, the problem is that while the playoff picture has tightened, other teams are making moves up the standings just as the Rangers got back into contention.

From this point on, the Rangers are between a rock and a hard place. The rock is that, according to Tankathon, the team's remaining schedule is among the toughest in the sport. In fact, with a .518 strength of schedule, Texas has the fourth most brutal remaining schedule in baseball and second toughest in the AL behind only Baltimore.

Remaining schedule ranks among MLB’s toughest as rivals draw softer paths

How the Orioles do the rest of the way is obviously far less important than how the Texas Rangers do as they fight for both the AL West title and/or a Wild Card spot. There's also the fact that ESPN's RPI has the team as having one of the easiest schedules (25th in baseball) up until this point.

Sitting 4.5 games out of the NL West, the Rangers do have six more games against the Astros. Of course, they'd need to sweep to make a dent with those games.

They are also only 1.5 games out of the Wild Card. Still, they're currently 5th in those standings, behind the Boston Red Sox, Seattle Mariners, New York Yankees, and Cleveland Guardians. They are tied with the Guardians but are currently behind the AL Central team in tiebreakers.

The hard place for the Texas Rangers is just how easy the remaining schedules are for just about everyone they're competing against in the playoff race. The Guardians are currently 23rd in baseball in remaining strength of schedule, the Yankees are 26th, Houston is 24th, Seattle is 21st, and even Kansas City is 20th. Only Boston has a remotely demanding schedule, 14th in the league.

All of this is why Fangraphs gives the Rangers just a 34% chance of making the playoffs. The road to the playoffs has always been hard. It's only gotten harder in the last few days.