CLEVELAND — There will be scars from this season for Jake Burger.
Emotional ones, for sure. Turns out there will be physical ones, too.
Burger, who broke a 2-for-28 skid with a two-run single in the third inning of the season finale, confirmed to The Dallas Morning News Sunday that he will have surgery later this week to repair a torn tendon sheath in his left wrist, a lingering issue from an injury he sustained in mid-August, only days after he’d returned from an IL stint.
Burger, acquired from Miami in the offseason to help the Rangers punish fastballs, struggled with injuries all throughout his first season. He went to the IL three times with oblique, quadriceps and wrist injuries. Burger received a cortisone injection for the wrist injury, which gave him some relief, but when the anti-inflammatory effects ebbed, he could once again feel the tendon “popping” in and out of place for the final weeks of the season.
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“The shot helped for the first half of the month, but then I started doing some compensating,” Burger said. “And I ended up putting myself in a lot of bad counts.”
The surgical procedure is similar to the one that Josh Jung underwent after his own injury-plagued 2024 season. Jung returned to play a career-high 131 games in 2025.
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The injuries aside, it was a tumultuous and often disappointing first year for Burger in Texas. Besides the three IL stints, he was also briefly demoted to the minor leagues after struggling through April and he essentially split time with Rowdy Tellez at first base over the final five weeks.
Along the way, Burger saw drops in virtually every offensive metric. His .266 OBP going into the season’s final day was the sixth lowest in baseball among 277 players with at least 300 plate appearances and his walk rate of 3.2% was the third lowest. Just as concerning: Burger didn’t hit fastballs like he had previously, batting only .238 against the pitch with a .459 slugging percentage; drops of 50 and 80 points, respectively. He also ranked in the top 20 in swing percentage at 55.1%.
“There were moments that were good and moments that were ugly,” Burger said. “I could never get anything going for any length of time. But I know I need to get better consistently at contributing. When I don’t have my ‘A’ swing, I’ve got to do a better job of working at-bats or moving runners or even on the basepaths to contribute.
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“My swing percentage was too high and I got into bad counts too quickly. I want to win games. I need to do a better job of contributing to them.”
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