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 outfielder Michael Helman.
Michael Helman was one of the good, fun stories of the maddening 2025 Texas Rangers season. If the Rangers had been able to pull off that improbable September comeback and make the playoffs, he would have entered the pantheon of unexpected sports heroes.
Shades of Francisco Cabrera, whose two out pinch hit single in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 of the 1992 NLCS off of Pirates closer Stan Belinda, with the Braves down one, sending the Braves to the World Series, after having just 11 major league plate appearances in the 1992 regular season.
Or Tom Lawless, who hit a three run homer off of Twins starter Frank Viola in Game 4 of the 1987 World Series, giving the Cardinals a lead in the game they wouldn’t relinquish. Lawless was on the Cardinals’ roster all season, rarely played (this was back in the days of 10 man pitching staffs, when National League teams had seven bench guys), and had two hits all season — the first not coming until August 12, in Game 113, and the second not coming until the final regular season game of the year.
Can you imagine what it would be like, in 2026, if a position player was on a team’s roster all year and didn’t have a hit until mid-August? Social media would be all over it. He would become a meme. Late in blowouts, fans would be chanting for him to be put into the game, like college basketball fans calling for Olivier Roux late in a Florida Gator blowout, or Mavs fans in the late 80s chanting for Dennis Nutt.
Drafted in the 11th round in 2018 out of Texas A&M by the Twins, Helman finally made it to the bigs in 2024 with Minnesota, getting 10 plate appearances in 9 games and somehow managing to play four different positions in that small stretch. He was acquired by the Cardinals right before spring training started last year for the always popular cash considerations, was claimed on waivers by the Pirates in May, followed by the Rangers claiming him on waivers less than a week later.
Helman was AAA depth for the Rangers, and as such, got summoned a couple of times to the bigs during the summer for short stints, and was fine, didn’t embarrass himself, did what you hoped a depth guy called up to patch a hole for a short time would do.
When half the team was struck down by the injury gods in August, Helman was brought back up once again, and asked to play a more regular role. It doing so, it is fair to say, he exceeded expectations.
For about a month, Helman was spectacular. He hit. He played great defense. He was dynamic. In a particularly memorable pair of games, he drove in all five Rangers runs in a 5-0 win against the Milwaukee Brewers, blowing the game open in the fifth with a grand slam off of Jose Quintana, then hit a game tying homer the next day to help the Rangers to what would be a 5-4 win against the Brew Crew.
From the time he was called up on August 23 through September 13, when the Rangers won their second straight game against the Mets, putting them just two games back in the A.L. West and for Wild Card spots 2 and 3, Helman slashed .294/.345/.627 in 56 plate appearances, while making some dazzling catches in center field. The Rangers’ unexpected surge while missing so many key players was driven by unexpected guys, including Helman.
Alas, we know how things turned out. After that September 13 win in New York, the Rangers wouldn’t win again for 11 days, losing eight straight and crashing out of the playoff race. And after September 13, Cinderella Helman turned into a pumpkin, slashing .162/.205/.216.
For the season, Helman put up a .232/.290/.455 slash line in 110 plate appearances, giving him an impressive 1.0 bWAR. Very good results from him, and part of why the Rangers were playing meaningful games in the final month of the year. It led to some talk that he should be penciled into the Rangers 2026 plans, part of the Opening Day roster, getting a platoon role in the outfield, with possibly the opportunity to do even more.
Looking under the hood, though, the underlying metrics for Helman were not as good as the raw numbers would suggest. They were, in fact, kind of awful.
Helman didn’t walk much, and struck out at an average rate. Combined with his middling batting average, it means that he had a sub-.300 OBP. His offensive value was primarily derived by his hitting for a surprising amount of power — five home runs in 110 plate appearances, a rate higher than he had shown even in the minors.
The batted ball data isn’t encouraging about how sustainable that would appear to be. Helman’s average exit velocity was near the bottom of the league, as was his hard hit rate. His stint with the Rangers resulted in a .250 xwOBA and a .323 xSLG.
Michael Helman provides value to this team on the 40 man roster as depth, a guy you can stash in AAA and bring up if someone is hurt and you need a fill in on the active roster for a week or two. He’s fast and can play good defense in center, which has value.
But he does not appear to be someone who is going to hit enough to have a meaningful role on a major league team. He turns 30 in May, and his OPS for Round Rock last year was 744, the same as it was in the big leagues, weirdly enough. He has a career .255/.327/.446 slash line in 266 games in AAA. He’s the 39th or 40th guy on a 40 man roster, someone you like to have available, but also someone who is going to be a waiver wire candidate when you need a 40 man spot at some point.
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