The Texas Rangers have lost six of their last eight to fall three games below .500 and 4.5 games behind first-place Seattle in the AL West. The 2023 World Series champs are in a perilous spot, and it's hard not to point fingers at a specific player who has gravely underperformed: second baseman Marcus Semien.
So, what's the deal? Semien finished third in AL MVP voting a couple years ago and was integral to the Rangers' World Series run. It was his third time finishing third-place in the MVP race. He's a three-time All-Star, a two-time Silver Slugger and, again, a champ. His sudden decline has been rather shocking.
Through 56 games this season, Semien has a .176 average with a .485 OPS, with considerably more strikeouts (48) than hits (34). The dude just can't find his swing right now. He remains incredible in the field, which is a slight saving grace, but the Rangers genuinely cannot afford this level of incompetence at the plate. Semien isn't slumping; he's dragging the entire lineup down.
Factor in his contract — all seven years and $175 million, which runs through 2028 — and one could quite convincingly argue that Semien is the worst value in MLB right now.
Subscribe to The Whiteboard, FanSided's daily email newsletter on everything basketball. If you like The Whiteboard, share it with a friend. If you hate it, share it with an enemy!
Rangers need Marcus Semien to figure out his swing — and quickly
This is not entirely out of the blue. Semien's metrics were on a downward swing last season. He finished with a .699 OPS, his lowest mark since 2020 and the fourth-worst mark of his career, including his rookie and sophomore campaigns. Semien has never been a hard-hit machine, but last season he was in the 91st percentile for strikeout rate. His plate discipline and overall approach has long been a strength. Now, all of a sudden, that's slipping. Or more accurately, falling — off a cliff, it seems.
The Rangers are in a tough spot, as Semien is due to cash a $26 million check this season. He's too expensive to excise from the lineup completely. Texas tends to wield an aggressive wallet in free agency, but we aren't talking about the Dodgers. When the Rangers pour significant resources into a player, it caps their ability to spend elsewhere. It also means they need some level of production from that player.
Semien hasn't just been bad, he has been straight up one of the worst hitters in MLB, regardless of contract value. You'd be hard-pressed to pluck a random prospect out of Triple-A who'd perform so poorly at the plate. Semien's strikeout rate is down to the 51st percentile this season. His expected batting average (.227) and expected slugging (.372) points to some bad luck, but this is not a strange, fluky stretch from a dominant hitter. There is something fundamentally wrong with Semien's swing right now. His confidence is shot and his production has cratered.
The Rangers will give him the longest leash possible to figure this out, because what else can they do? But man, it's rough. It helps Semien, and hurts Texas, that utility players Ezequiel Duran (.313 OPS) and Sam Haggerty (.622 OPS) have also stunk it up in limited plate appearances, but eventually Texas will need to search elsewhere for contingency plans, whether it can really afford to or not.