WASHINGTON, D.C. — Marcus Semien seems to have found himself. He’s pulling balls into the left field corner. Scoring runs and punishing fastballs, particularly those over the inner half of the plate.
It’s not hyperbole. Hyperbole is extrapolating one good game and pronouncing it a trend. For it to actually become a trend, it requires consistency. A series is a start; a week is a trend. It’s now going on 10 days when you include Saturday’s 5-0 win over Washington.
Batting cleanup, he had a hand in all five of the Rangers’ runs. Four scored on his hits, and he scored the fifth. His two-run double in the eighth put the Rangers over the threshold for a near-automatic win after they frittered away a golden opportunity in the seventh and looked like they were about to rinse and repeat in the eighth.
It must be nice to finally have good ol’ Marcus Semien back.
Simmy stays hot and gives the Rangers and Jacob deGrom a little cushion. ♨️
— SportsDay Rangers (@dmn_rangers) June 7, 2025
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Well, that’s a matter of who you ask. Of course, it’s nice to see his performance more closely resemble the past, especially when you consider the rest of what the Rangers have run out on this current road trip. Semien is hitting .353, the rest of the team is at .163. If you ask Bruce Bochy, it’s a godsend; the manager has been dying for some consistency out of his lineup all year. Ask Semien, though, and the answer might be a little different. If you get one at all. Semien doesn’t want to look back. Doesn’t want to focus on his first two months of the season. He is only looking forward.
“I just continue to work hard and show up every day,” Semien said Saturday. “There are going to be ups and downs. There were a lot of downs early. It’s been a better week for me.
“Have I spent time [trying] other things? No, not really. I just had a rough start. I’m just trying to stay consistent with what’s working, so that eventually, when we talk post-game, it will be ‘good job,’ instead of ‘you were bad, now you are good.’ I got on base three times, I drove in some runs and I would love that to be myself. But searching for myself? I don’t know. I don’t know if I have an answer for that one.”
We’ll let him ponder it a minute while we make the presumptive declaration that it is indeed good for the Rangers to have the Jacob deGrom of old back. He threw seven shutout innings on Saturday, the 10th consecutive time he’s pitched at least five innings and not allowed more than two runs. A club record.
It all served to remind the Rangers that, for as bad as this season has gone, they are only five games below .500 with more than 90 to play and a very simple formula for winning.
It goes like this: Get to four runs.
When they score four or more this year, they are 22-4, an .846 win percentage, which ranks second in baseball. The leader is Detroit, which also happens to have the best overall win percentage in the sport. It’s a good formula. Been tough for the Rangers to figure out, for sure, but it’s something they can visualize.
“We’ve talked about this as a staff and as a club,” Bochy said. “We’re not getting what we need, but we’ve got a chance to win every ball game. If we can just get some consistency with this offense. … and I know, we’ve had games where we’ve gotten runs and then the next day it doesn’t happen. It’s got to be consistent and find a way to do some things like we did today, and get those timely hits. Look at what Marcus did today. I mean, that’s such a lift for the ball club, when a guy gets a big hit like that, it drives in a couple. We just have to do it consistently.”
OK, on that note, back to Semien. Semien doesn’t mean to be evasive, but perhaps too much self-reflection helped get him into the mess that was his first months of the season anyway. When results didn’t initially come, maybe he did try to tinker and only sunk farther into a hole. By the time new hitting instructor Bret Boone came around, the old second baseman found the current second baseman tied up in a ball of knots of thoughts, movements and fixes. The whole idea of the first month with Semien has been to let him simply unravel and stop thinking.
Has he moved up an inch or two on the plate? Maybe. Tried to hit the ball to right field, or at least tried to think about hitting it there as a starting mechanism? Perhaps. Has he lessened his load into the swing, allowing his bat to get more out in front at the point of contact. Could be.
You decide.
“We don’t want guys to get away from their strength,” Bochy said. “He’s got a quick bat. He does pull the ball a lot. It’s served him well in a tremendous career. But when your timing is off, it’s hard to do some of the things that you normally do. Now, he’s got so much confidence up there. But, to that point: Yeah, we wanted him to be who he is.”
Just good ol’ Marcus Semien.
Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant
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