Cal Quantrill has gone from minor-league signing to the Rangers’ most reliable starter, and that sudden rise is creating a real problem for Texas this winter.
Quantrill was voted the team’s Player of the Month for August by Rangers media members and broadcasters after putting together a 1.45 ERA and a 0.84 WHIP with 29 strikeouts over 31 innings. He kept rolling into September, blanking the AL-best Tampa Bay Rays on Thursday night with seven shutout innings, two hits allowed, two walks and five strikeouts on 95 pitches.
That kind of run has changed the conversation around the rotation. With Nathan Eovaldi and Jack Leiter on the injured list, Quantrill has seized the chance in front of him, and the Rangers can’t really talk themselves into pulling him from the rotation once those arms come back.
His path to this point has been anything but straightforward. Quantrill opened the season at Triple-A Round Rock, and the only reason he’s in the big-league rotation now is because Eovaldi and Leiter are sidelined. Texas selected his contract in mid-April, but he worked out of the bullpen until late June.
The production has been impossible to ignore. Since August 1, Quantrill has posted the lowest ERA in MLB among pitchers with at least 30 innings, sitting at 1.18. He’s also now 7-5 with a 2.79 ERA in nearly 100 innings, despite not even being on the Rangers’ Opening Day roster.
That’s why the postseason picture matters, too. Texas finished Friday two games behind the Cleveland Guardians for the final Wild Card spot and three games behind the Houston Astros in the AL West, sitting at 70-72. Quantrill has made a strong case that, if the Rangers get into October, he should be part of the rotation.
The bigger question is what all of this means after the season.
Re-signing Quantrill would make sense on the surface, especially after Eovaldi and Leiter’s injuries hammered home how much rotation depth matters. But keeping him would also squeeze out one of the Rangers’ younger arms from the Opening Day rotation.
Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi are considered locks for the 2027 Opening Day rotation, and both veterans have no-trade clauses. If Quantrill is added to that mix, then Kumar Rocker, Jack Leiter or MacKenzie Gore would be the odd man out. Cody Bradford would also have a much tougher path.
That leaves Texas with some uncomfortable choices. Gore has looked better lately, putting up a 2.53 ERA since August 1, but inconsistency has been part of his season.
Rocker and Leiter have had even more trouble. At the same time, controllable starting pitching - even from arms with uneven track records - has real value on the trade market.
Leiter is under team control through 2030, while Rocker won’t reach free agency until after 2031. That gives the Rangers options.
They could move one of those young starters for a prospect haul or for a big leaguer who better fits a need. But if they deal too much depth, they could end up thin on the mound.
Another path would be shifting one or both to the bullpen and seeing whether their stuff plays up in shorter stints. Both have live arms, so the idea isn’t hard to understand.
Still, the cleanest answer might be the simplest one: bring Quantrill back. His emergence has been one of the best stories of the Rangers’ season, and it has also forced Texas to confront just how crowded - and uncertain - its future rotation picture has become. If the Rangers do re-sign him, then someone among Rocker, Leiter or Gore may have to start the year in the bullpen or back at Triple-A Round Rock.
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For Texas, that leaves Carter in a familiar but important spot: still young enough to project forward, but clear-eyed enough to know the offensive answer will likely require some swing adjustments. The Rangers do not need him to reinvent himself overnight, but they do need the bat to catch up with the glove if he is going to reclaim the ceiling that made him such an exciting piece in the first place. An offseason of mechanical work may be where that next step has to start. [Read more 🡒]