This story was excerpted from Kennedi Landry's Rangers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ARLINGTON -- The reigning World Series champion Texas Rangers wrapped up April just above .500, with a 16-14 record.

It wasn’t a perfect month by any means, but as the club continues to get players back from the injured list, there's no reason to panic about treading water this early in the season.

As the nine-game, 10-day homestand comes to an end with a three-game set against the Nationals this week, Rangers general manager Chris Young fielded questions from the media about their first month of the 2024 season.

Here are the highlights:

Question: What are your evaluations and takeaways from the first month of the season?
Young: I think that we're a really good team. I'm excited about where we are. I think we've done some things really, really well from a pitching standpoint. Offensively, we've shown signs of what we can be, but we haven't had the consistency there yet. Some of it is understandable with where we are just from a personnel standpoint. But I expect it's going to get better as the season progresses.

We've had a very tough schedule to start the season. I'm not trying to make excuses for our record, [but] I think Oakland and Houston are the only under-.500 teams that we've played. The schedule has been hard. And Washington is a tough team. They're playing really, really well. So my point is that we've held our head above water, but I think there's a lot of room for improvement. There's certainly some things that we can get better at.

What do you make of some of the early offensive numbers?
Young: "Concern" is not the right word. It's not a concern. We haven't, in my mind, sort of stabilized or normalized to what we're capable of yet. I think some of that is expected. Obviously, we lost an important piece in Josh Jung after four games. Josh Smith has done a masterful job of filling in there.

Corey [Seager], he's coming off surgery, and we expected that it would take a little while to get him going. I still think he's really had some bad luck in there that's factored in. I think that's going to even out and normalize at some point. The young guys with Wyatt [Langford] and Evan [Carter] -- the rookies going through their first Major League season -- their aptitude is so high, they are going to adjust and they're going to take off at some point.

On Evan, it seems [manager Bruce] Bochy isn’t fully sold on having him face lefties [1-for-14 with a walk against LHP this season].
Young: I think that [Carter] hasn't had a lot of exposure to lefties over the course of his short career. He's never faced lefties with the quality of stuff that Major League lefties have. I think [Bochy] is doing a very good job of giving him his fair share of at-bats against lefties knowing that there's only one way to develop, and that's to go through it. There may be some bumps on the road as we go through that, but Evan, like I said, the aptitude is so high. He's going to get there.

What about Langford’s first month in the big leagues [.238/.314/.314 in 28 games]?
Young: Wyatt has been really, really good. The on-base percentage, the approach has been elite. I think he’s maybe a little too passive at times when he could let it go a little bit more. But that's part of being a rookie. You'd probably rather have it this way -- where he comes up and he's showing elite plate discipline -- than swinging at everything. The slug is probably the only thing that hasn't quite been there to the level we saw in Spring Training, but we all know what's in there, and we saw, when he does slug, what it looks like. I'm excited for that to come, because I really believe it's going to come soon.

What is your assessment of Cole Winn’s first few weeks in the big leagues? Why has he made this big jump
Young: He’s been great. It's been fun to see him really come into his own. I think he's built some confidence. He's attacking the strike zone. His stuff has been electric, and really just as long as he's over the plate and throwing strikes getting ahead of hitters, he's got a lot of different weapons to get guys out. He's been a huge boost for our bullpen.

Confidence is a big part of it. Success breeds confidence. And he has a very simplified approach. Just speaking very truthfully, from my own previous experiences, it's very easy to concentrate at this level. It's a different environment and different environments, certainly the best environment can bring out the best in people and I think we're seeing that in Cole.