If you squinted hard enough, if you looked past the fourth-place finish in 2022 and the resignation of the head of baseball operations and the firing of the manager, you could see a day like this 22 months ago, when the Rangers introduced the two players they expected to carry them to the franchise’s first title. They sat in the concourse at Globe Life Field, first shortstop Corey Seager and then second baseman Marcus Semien, representing half a billion dollars, the better part of a decade and the best hopes of a generation of Dallas baseball fans, and they talked about winning a World Series.
Maybe no one envisioned this exact scenario, an 11–7 victory over the Diamondbacks in Game 4 to push the Rangers a win from a championship, but this was the idea: Semien in the leadoff spot, tripling in two runs; Seager hitting second, launching a home run to score two more. In his next at-bat, Semien hit his own homer; in the ninth, Seager tacked on a double. And just for good measure, they turned a double play to end the sixth.
They harbored the same vision on that day in December 2021, and they helped bring it closer to fruition in October ’23. Texas had just lost 102 games, and it would lose 94 a year later, leading to the ousters of president of baseball operations Jon Daniels and manager Chris Woodward, but Seager and Semien—who each signed essentially on the condition that the other do the same—knew this team was close. A rotation’s worth of veteran starters would follow them over the next year and a half.
