Texas Rangers are struggling on offense and send slumping slugger Jake Burger down to Triple-A

By Canadian Press on May 2, 2025.

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — The Texas Rangers optioned slumping slugger Jake Burger to Triple-A Round Rock on Friday, a move that comes when the entire team is struggling to score runs.

Burger, a first baseman and one of the Rangers’ key offseason acquisitions, hit .190 with three home runs, 12 RBIs and a team-high 32 strikeouts in 100 at-bats his first 30 games.

The move was made before the start of a three-game series against AL West-leading Seattle.

“Getting back to the best version of himself. I think more than anything it’s a reset mentally,” said Chris Young, the team’s president of baseball operations. “Fair or unfair, his performance is magnified a little bit by the performance of others, the collective performance. We’re just not at the level we need to be.”

Texas selected the contract of first baseman Blaine Crim from Round Rock. Infielder Jonathan Ornelas was recalled from the Triple-A squad and infielder Nick Ahmed was designated for assignment to make room on the 40-man roster for Crim.

Crim was set to make his major league debut, batting eighth and playing first base Friday night. The 27-year-old, a 19th-round draft pick in 2019, hit .313 with seven homers and 25 RBIs in 28 games for Round Rock.

The Rangers went into the series having lost seven of their last nine games. They scored 28 runs in that stretch, but most of those came when they had a season-high 15 against Oakland on Tuesday. They scored only 13 runs in those other eight games, including a 2-0 win.

Texas was last in the American League with 103 runs scored, and was 16-16 overall while its starting pitchers ranked first in the league with a 2.93 ERA.

“There’s no hidden messages with these moves,” Young said. “We’re not going well offensively. This is simply we’re committed to winning, and the players that are performing are going to get playing time.”

Designated hitter Joc Pederson, a free agent last winter when he became the team’s other prominent offensive addition, was hitting .108 going into Friday night, when he was batting third. He was as low as .052 after a recent 0-for-41 drought, the franchise’s longest hitless stretch since at least 1974.

The 29-year-old Burger was acquired from Miami in a trade during the winter meetings in December. He hit 29 homers and had 76 RBIs for the Marlins last season, after a combined 34 homers and 80 RBIs in 2023 when he was with the Chicago White Sox before a trade-deadline deal to Miami.

“We just think to get him in a situation where he can have a chance to reset, relax a little bit, find his swing,” manager Bruce Bochy said of the move. “He’s going to be back up here. He’s going to help us win a lot of games this year.”

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The Associated Press