As much as Seattle wishes it was, it’s not. It’s not in the race for the A.L. West. It’s hard to make up ground when you constantly lose.

It’s a two-team race and the Rangers are barely in it. They’re desperately trying to make up ground, picking up a game yesterday on the Astros when Houston lost to Toronto and Texas beat Triple-A San Francisco.

The best news that came out of yesterday was the 4.1 innings of shutout baseball that Cody Bradford pitched—he hasn’t thrown in a major league game since September 25, 2024, nearly two years ago. He had been working on a good second year of his career when he torn his UCL that took long to heal because he had a setback in April with more soreness. 

It’s been a long journey back for Cody. Hopefully he can help step into a rotation that’s running on fumes with tired and fading Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi. 

If the Rangers have any chance of catching Houston, it’s going to have to get help from a rotation that has been very lackluster. As you can imagine from a team that is perpetually .500, the Rangers rotation ERA is ranked fifteenth in the league. Right in the middle. (They’re fourteenth in team batting.) So, the arrival of Cody Bradford is a breath of fresh air. 

He struck out five, walked two, and gave up five hits in his first game off the I.L. They couldn’t have asked for more. But, now they’re going to have to ask for more. The Rangers are going to need it if they have any hope of catching Houston.

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