Position players for the Texas Rangers joined the pitchers and catchers in Surprise, Arizona, as the team held its first full-squad spring training session ahead of its World Series title defense on Monday.
The message was much the same as last week, as the players who spoke to the media echoed the points made by the pitchers and catchers: It was great, but we need to focus so we can do it again.
“Coming off the run we made last year and trying to defend our title, I think guys are hungry,” outfielder Travis Jankowski told the media on Monday. “We got a good taste of what it takes to get there and a good taste of what you need to do, and we want to do it again.”
Jankowski, a bench player on last year’s team, appeared in 107 games and hit .263 with 30 RBIs and 19 stolen bases. He said he chose to return to the Rangers as a free agent because of the culture general manager Chris Young and manager Bruce Bochy have instilled in a short time.
“There’s no place I’d rather be with the culture that C-Y and Boch have built,” Jankowski added. “There’s certain things that you wish for in a job. You want to come to work happy every day and be around guys that you enjoy being around. It’s not like that everywhere, so when you get that, you want to keep it.”
If one player on the Rangers’ roster knows how to defend a title, it’s World Series MVP and All-Star shortstop Corey Seager, who also won the 2020 World Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers. While he enjoyed last season’s accomplishments, he told reporters he turned his focus to defending the title as soon as the victory parade was over in November.
“You can’t live in what you did,” he explained. “You just got to get back going. … You’re already behind, so you’ve got to kind of start right away. Once you start working out for the next year, it’s kind of over.”
Seager is still working his way back from sports hernia surgery. No updates were given on his status on Monday, other than he hopes to ramp up baseball activity soon.
Regardless of when they get the All-Star back in the lineup, Bochy wants to see his team continuing its approach from last season.
“You go out there, and you play the game the same way you’ve been playing,” Bochy told the media on Monday. “Some people may look at us as a target. I’m hoping that we still look at other teams as a target. That’s the way we want to approach it, and that’s going to be our mindset.”
The Rangers play their first spring training game at 1:05 p.m. CT against the Kansas City Royals on Friday.
