ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Chris Young is hoping that the Texas Rangers can flip the script from 2023, when they won their only World Series title.
The Rangers would like to finish this regular season the way they started that championship one two years ago.
Texas (53-50) went into its day off Thursday, after a three-game series sweep of the Athletics and a week before the trade deadline, with 59 games left.
“I look back on 2023 and we went 40-20 in our first 60 games. And after that, you know, the next 102 we were two games under .500,” Young, the team's president of baseball operations, said before the opener of that series against the A's. "Every season has a different ebb and flow to it. And my hope is that the next 62 games are our best 62 games of our season. If that’s the case, then we’ll look back and say, hey, the first half of the season wasn’t as much fun as we had hoped, but it was all worth it to get where we wanted to go."
While third in the American League West behind Houston and Seattle, the Rangers were only 1 1/2 games out of the league's final wild-card spot. They won two of three games at the division-leading Astros before the All-Star break, and are 5-1 since, including a series win over AL Central leader Detroit. There are three games at home this weekend against Atlanta and then three in Los Angeles against the Angels before the trade deadline.
Texas is 12-6 in July and averaged 5.6 runs per game, nearly two runs a game more than in their first 85 games before that. The pitching and defense have been good all season, with the staff's MLB-best 3.16 ERA and a majors-low 32 fielding errors. The Rangers have allowed two runs or fewer in their last seven games, matching the longest such streak in Texas history.
“If we can continue the progress we’ve shown over the last several weeks ... it’s going to determine a lot,” Young said about what the team might do before the deadline. ”So not to put any more pressure on anything, it’s just the reality of this point in the season, and we’re looking up in the standings.”
Corey Seager, in the fourth season of his $325 million, 10-year deal with Texas, has a 24-game on-base streak. He has hit .356 with eight homers and 22 RBIs in what is the second-longest active streak in the majors, behind the 29 by Milwaukee's Christian Yelich.
The two-time World Series MVP shortstop had a 30-game streak last year and a 26-gamer in 2023, making him the only player with streaks of at least 24 games in each of those seasons.
Right-hander Jacob deGrom (10-2, 2.28 ERA) was the only Rangers player picked as an All-Star, but the team gave right-hander Nathan Eovaldi (7-3, 1.58) the $100,000 All-Star bonus from his contract even after he was left off the American League squad.
Eovaldi is set to start Friday against the Braves, his first game since July 13, when he went 7 2/3 innings in a 5-1 win at Houston before the break. The 35-year-old right-hander was scratched because of back stiffness from last Sunday's game against Oakland, and a matchup with AL All-Star starter Tarik Skubal.
The 37-year-old deGrom missed most of the past two seasons after Tommy John surgery, and his 118 1/3 innings pitched are already his most since 2019, when he won his second consecutive NL Cy Young Award with the New York Mets. DeGrom went to Atlanta last week but opted against pitching in the All-Star Game, and the Rangers intentionally gave him a nine-day break between starts.
“If we can keep him out there and keep getting the best version of Jacob for another 10 or so starts, it’s a great thing for our club,” Young said. "He's feeling really good, and we’re doing our best to try to protect him from a health and recovery standpoint.”
Josh Jung is 4 for 8 with a homer and four runs scored in three games since being recalled from Triple-A Round Rock, where the third baseman was sent July 2 when in a bad slump.
Jon Gray made his season debut Wednesday against the A's, pitching two innings in relief for the win. The right-hander, who can be a starter or reliever, suffered a fractured forearm when struck by a comeback liner in a spring training game.
Joc Pederson, the offseason addition out since May 25 because of a broken right hand, could re-join the team next week after a rehab assignment.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Texas Rangers' Jacob deGrom arrives on the red carpet for the MLB baseball All-Star game, Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Texas Rangers' Michael Helman, right, celebrates after hitting a home run that also scored teammates Cody Freeman, left, and Josh Jung, center, during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Athletics, Monday, July 21, 2025, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Texas Rangers' Corey Seager runs home after hitting a home run during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Athletics, Tuesday, July 22, 2025, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department released thousands of files Friday about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein but the incomplete document dump did not break significant ground about the long-running criminal investigations of the financier or his ties to wealthy and powerful individuals.
The files included a small number of photos of President Donald Trump, sparing the White House for now from having to confront fresh revelations about an Epstein relationship that the administration for months has tried in vain to push past.
It did, however, feature a series of never-before-seen photos of Bill Clinton from a trip that the former president appears to have take with Epstein decades ago.
Reaction to the disclosures broke along mostly partisan lines. Democrats and some Republicans seized on the limited release to accuse the Justice Department of failing to meet a congressionally set deadline to produce the Epstein files. White House officials on social media gleefully promoted a photo of Clinton in a hot tub with a person with a blacked-out face. The Trump administration touted the release as a show of its commitment to transparency, ignoring the fact that the Justice Department just months ago said no more files would be released. Congress then passed a law mandating it.
The records, consisting largely of pictures but also including call logs, grand jury testimony, interview transcripts and other documents, arrived amid extraordinary anticipation that they might offer the most detailed look yet at nearly two decades worth of government scrutiny of Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women and underage girls. Their release has long been demanded by a public hungry to learn whether any of Epstein’s associates knew about or participated in the abuse. Epstein’s accusers have also sought answers about why federal authorities shut down their initial investigation into the allegations in 2008.
Yet the release, replete with redactions. seemed unlikely to satisfy the public clamor for information given how many investigative records the department indicated it was continuing to withhold.
In a letter to Congress obtained by The Associated Press, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote that the Justice Department was continuing to review files in its possession and expected additional disclosures by the end of the year. The department also said it was withholding some documents under exemptions allowed in the law and was redacting names of victims. The department expects to complete its document production by the end of the year, Blanche said.
Bowing to political pressure from fellow Republicans, Trump on Nov. 19 signed a bill giving the Justice Department 30 days to release most of its files and communications related to Epstein, including information about the investigation into his death in a federal jail. The law’s passage, which set a deadline for Friday, was a remarkable display of bipartisanship that overcame months of opposition from Trump and Republican leadership.
The released files include a small number of photos of Trump, which appear to have been known for decades, including two in which Trump and Epstein are posing with now-first lady Melania Trump in February 2000 at an event at Trump’s Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, before the pair’s friendship ruptured.
Trump was friends with Epstein for years before the two had a falling-out. Neither he nor Clinton has ever been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and the mere inclusion of someone’s name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said last month that she had ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate Epstein’s ties to Trump’s political foes, including Clinton. Bondi acted after Trump pressed for such an inquiry, though he did not explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate.
In July, Trump dismissed some of his own supporters as “weaklings” for falling for “the Jeffrey Epstein hoax.” But both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., failed to prevent the legislation from coming to a vote.
Trump did a U-turn on the files once it became clear that congressional action was inevitable. He insisted that the Epstein matter had become a distraction to the Republican agenda and that releasing the records was the best way to move on.
After nearly two decades of court action and prying by reporters, a voluminous number of records related to Epstein had already been public well before Froday, including flight logs, address books, email correspondence, police reports, grand jury records, courtroom testimony and transcripts of depositions of his accusers, his staffers and others.
Senior Trump White House aides took to X to promote photos in the Epstein files that show Clinton with women whose faces are redacted.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, wrote “Oh my!” and added a shocked face emoji in response to a photo of Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.
“They can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton,” Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña said in a statement.
“There are two types of people here,” he said. “The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships after that. We’re in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that.”
Police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein in 2005 after the family of a 14-year-old girl reported she had been molested at his mansion. The FBI joined the investigation, and authorities gathered testimony from multiple underage girls who said they had been hired to give Epstein sexual massages.
Ultimately, though, prosecutors gave Epstein a deal that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution. He pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges involving someone under age 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.
Epstein’s accusers then spent years in civil litigation trying to get that plea deal set aside. One of those women, Virginia Giuffre, accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters, starting at age 17, with numerous other men, including billionaires, famous academics, U.S. politicians and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Britain’s Prince Andrew. Mountbatten-Windsor denied ever having sex with Giuffre, but King Charles III stripped him of his royal titles this year after Giuffre’s memoir was published after she died.
Prosecutors never brought charges in connection with Giuffre’s claims, but her account fueled conspiracy theories about supposed government plots to protect the powerful. Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia in April at age 41.
Federal prosecutors in New York brought new sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail a month after his arrest. Prosecutors then charged Epstein’s longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, with recruiting underage girls for Epstein to abuse.
Maxwell was convicted in late 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed over the summer by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Her lawyers argued that she never should have been tried or convicted.
The Justice Department in July said it had not found any information that could support prosecuting anyone else.
Sisak reported from New York.
Follow the AP’s coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.
FILE - This photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein, March 28, 2017. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File)
