With the 2025 Texas Rangers season having come to an end, we shall be, over the course of the offseason, taking a look at every player who appeared in a major league game for the Texas Rangers in 2025.
Today we are looking at infielder Nick Ahmed.
Yes, Nick Ahmed played for the Texas Rangers in 2025. The Rangers purchased his contract in late April when Corey Seager went on the injured list, and was waived a little over a week later when the Rangers decided Jake Burger needed a re-set in AAA, and thus
needed a 40 man roster spot for Blaine Crim.
Ahmed cleared waivers, opted for his release, and, a couple of months later, announced his retirement.
Ahmed’s stint in Texas was a “blink and you’ll miss it” type deal. Three starts, two additional appearances when he was inserted mid-game, all at shortstop. Ahmed had 10 plate appearances for the Rangers and was 0 for 9, with a walk.
Ahmed had been signed to a minor league deal on the eve of spring training, and was one of the last cuts. I seem to vaguely recall there having been some talk in the spring that he might have value as a righthanded bat off the bench, even though, even in his prime, he wasn’t a good hitter, with a career best 97 OPS+ coming in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. I will acknowledge that I may be hallucinating that, or maybe am conflating various comments made by various folks or misremembering tweets or articles from the folks covering the team.
In any case, not long after being released, the Rangers re-signed Ahmed to a minor league deal, and thus had him in place to call up when Seager got hurt.
Something I had forgotten about until I went and looked at Ahmed’s B-R page, and went to see how he performed for Round Rock between being re-signed and being called up, is that he didn’t actually play for Round Rock. Or Frisco, or any other affiliate for the Rangers in 2025. He apparently stayed in Arizona, working out there at extended spring training, until he was summoned to the bigs.
Ahmed didn’t have to retire. The Rangers reportedly were interested in keeping him around at AAA as depth. I have to think that other teams would have welcomed the opportunity to stash him at AAA, as well. He was no longer the Gold Glove caliber defender at shortstop he was in his prime, had put up a slash line of .216/.258/.293 in 148 games since the start of 2023, but still would seemingly have been able to be on a AAA roster, had he wanted to.
I have to guess, based on his staying in extended spring training and then retiring in the summer, he didn’t want to do the minor league grind. Since the 2015 season, when he got up to the majors for good, Ahmed has played nine minor league games — six in 2017 while on a rehab assignment, and three in 2024 while on a rehab assignment. When he signed with the Padres at the end of August last year on a minor league deal, he was assigned to their ACL team (whose season was over), rather than the AAA team, as one would expect, until he was added to the major league roster three weeks later.
Nick Ahmed spent parts of 12 seasons in the majors, made over $40 million in his career, and, perhaps, it would seem, wasn’t interested in the AAA life. He did make an effort to hang on. He had spent his entire major league career with the Arizona Diamondbacks (who acquired him from Atlanta in the Justin Upton trade in the 2012-13 offseason) before being released by them in September of 2023. He played for San Francisco, San Diego and the Dodgers in 2024, and I kind of wish he’d latched on with the Rockies at some point before hanging it up so he could make a clean sweep of the National League West.
Nick Ahmed held on to being a major leaguer as long as he could. And when it became evident that he wasn’t considered a major leaguer any longer, he hung it up.
That seems reasonable to me.
Previously:
