ARLINGTON, Texas — Marcus Semien came to the Rangers with high expectations. That’s natural for a player who hit 45 home runs a year ago — a record among second basemen — and signed a seven-year, $175 million to be one of two pillars for a rebuilding franchise.
Pillars are supposed to stand for a long time, as Semien’s contract shows, and an early return on investment isn’t indicative of long-term production.
Still, through five games that’s all we have to judge Semien’s Rangers career, and the initial results haven’t been up to Semien’s recent standard.
Semien went 0 for 4 in Tuesday’s 4-1 loss to the Colorado Rockies. In five games, Semien has two hits in 24 at-bats and one RBI.
“He’s been chomping at the bit a little bit and I know he’s getting a little frustrated,” Rangers manager Chris Woodward said prior to Tuesday’s loss. “He wants to obviously help and do well.”
And Woodward said Semien has been doing that, even if it’s not reflected in the box scores so far. Semien was also brought to Texas to add a leadership element to the team, and Woodward said that hasn’t wavered through his cold offensive start. In talking about second-year outfield Adolis Garcia, Woodward also said Garcia could learn from Semien’s at bats and his approach, even if Semien’s expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) was in the bottom 10% of the league entering Tuesday, according to Statcast.
“One thing is he’s relentless,” Woodward said about Semien. “He doesn’t veer at all with his work and with his dialogue. He’s just 100 percent committed every day, so I’m not worried.
“He’s probably the least of any concerns because of the person I know he is and how resilient I know in his career he’s been.”
To Woodward’s resilience point, Semien’s career, both as a hitter and an infielder, has been on an upward trajectory. In 2015 he had 15 home runs and 35 errors. In 2019 and 2021 — the last two times he’s played a full 162-game season — Semien has a combined 78 home runs. He had a Gold Glove to his name a year ago.
An initial evaluation is the only evaluation available on Semien, but Woodward doesn’t think it’s a cause for concern.
“I just hope he has a little bit of success,” Woodward said.
The other half of that $500 million middle infield, Corey Seager, nearly hit his first home run as a Ranger on Tuesday, but Rockies outfielder Randal Grichuk leaped at the Globe Life Field fence, extended his glove into the Rangers bullpen and stole the home run. It would’ve been a three-run home run for the Rangers — a footnote that hurts for a team that lost by three runs on Tuesday.
