CHICAGO -- It is late August, which is usually the most trying time for a rookie. There are a whole set of unique challenges to face.

Opposed to the minor leagues, where the regular season finishes around Labor Day, there is still another month to go. The finish line isn’t quite in sight, which can wear a guy down mentally. Opponents have, by now, gotten detailed scouting reports and started to change approaches on their attack. Weaknesses are uncovered, flaws exposed.

This is the best way to describe Willie Calhoun’s August: Ascendant.

On Friday, playing the 100th major league game of his career, Calhoun the cleanup hitter bashed a three-run, first-inning home run. Unfortunately, for the Rangers, it amounted to all of their offense, too, in an 8-3 loss to Chicago.

Back to Calhoun. It was his seventh homer of the month. For August, he is hitting .273/.317/.584/.901. He is not being exposed, but rather trending upwards.

“He’s been tremendous,” Rangers manager Chris Woodward said. “He’s sustained the at-bat quality; it seems like it’s actually getting better. He’s getting pitched differently because he’s seen as a threat. And he remains a threat. I have been more impressed than I expected to be.”

Take Calhoun’s home run on Friday as an example. Calhoun got ahead of White Sox starter Dylan Cease 2-0, then took a high fastball for a strike. When Cease tried to double up on the pitch and the location, Calhoun jumped on the pitch and pulled the ball into the right field seats. It was a veteran at-bat in a high-leverage situation.

The 100th game of a player’s career doesn’t necessarily present any guarantees, but, by that time, a pretty clear picture of the player emerges. Consider that at 100 games, Nomar Mazara’s OPS was .757; three years later, Mazara’s career OPS is .754. Go back a little further and Elvis Andrus’ OPS was .708 after 100 games; a decade later, it’s .706. Of all the players the Rangers have promoted to the majors in the last decade, only Mitch Moreland (.862) had a higher OPS than Calhoun (.783) after 100 games. And Moreland was hitting in the bottom third of a stacked lineup.

Calhoun had a different route to 100 games than the others. While the others played regularly after being called up, Calhoun’s path was full of stops and starts. Calhoun had brief callups in 2017 and 2018, wasn’t called up until May this season, then spent three weeks on the IL, was optioned to the minors again and didn’t join the lineup for good until late July.

The two failed callups and Calhoun’s hunger to be in the majors allowed the Rangers to address flaws at the end of last season. Along with telling him to lose weight, they suggested a change in his bat path. Instead of an 11-degree launch angle, the aim was for 18 degrees. Now, nobody is going to the plate with geometry tools, but the point is, they wanted changes. He made them during the winter of his physical transformation.

“It was tough,” Calhoun said. “Nobody had ever messed with my swing. In the Dodgers organization, it was always defense first. I didn’t know much about my swing or hitting until this offseason. I didn’t know if I could try something new, but, in the end, I said: ‘I’m all yours.’ I was willing to drop everything I’d done and change. I wasn’t going to be hard-headed and I was going to listen.”

Said Woodward: “His success is partly due to his talent because he has lightning in his hands, but he really understands his swing and his approach. He recognizes spin on pitches right away. He’s asking the right questions in the dugout and in the clubhouse. You can see the wheels turning.”

As a result, the Rangers have a young hitter on a decidedly upward trajectory at a time when most players are only first starting to understand their deficiencies.

Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant