Texas Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young has made the direction plain: this is a club trying to retool for 2027, and the calendar may force some hard choices before Dec. 1.
With a potential work stoppage looming and the team again operating on a tighter budget this season, Young may have to navigate another offseason carefully. That means deciding which free agents are worth stretching for, and which one the Rangers can afford to move on from.
At the top of the keep list is starter Cal Quantrill. Texas brought him in on a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training, and he ended up becoming the club’s most reliable starter down the stretch. His final 10 days were interrupted by a right lat strain, and that absence clearly hurt the pitching staff.
Quantrill was 7-4 with a 2.01 ERA over his last 11 starts, striking out 50 and walking 11 in 58.1 innings. He stepped into Jack Leiter’s rotation spot after Leiter had ankle surgery in June and missed the rest of the year.
Quantrill finished 9-5 with a 2.86 ERA in 32 games, including 15 starts, and his ability to function either as a starter or a bulk reliever gives him extra value. The injury could soften his market a bit, but for a veteran who can fill multiple roles, the Rangers should make a real effort to bring him back.
Tyler Alexander belongs in that same conversation. Texas signed him for $1.125 million, and he turned into the Rangers’ best left-handed reliever outside of closer Jacob Latz. Alexander handled just about every job the bullpen asked of him: opener, multi-inning arm, even a brief turn as the closer early in the season.
He went 5-2 with a 3.70 ERA in 75 games, adding 14 holds and four saves in six chances. Over 73 innings, he struck out 60 and walked 23. The Rangers haven’t shown much urgency in recent years to retain veteran relievers, but this is one they should keep.
Then there’s Joc Pederson, the one free agent Texas can let walk.
Pederson’s two-year deal is up, though it includes a mutual option worth $18.5 million that both sides would have to trigger. Even if he wants to stay, that price tag may not fit if the Rangers are still working with last offseason’s budget limitations. And there’s a baseball case for moving on, too.
The 34-year-old did recover from a rough, injury-filled 2025 and finished at .235/.329/.487 with 26 home runs and 53 RBI. When Texas moved him to the leadoff spot in mid-May, it got his bat going, but it also took some of the run-production punch out of his profile. A lot of those homers came with the bases empty.
Texas has other ways to use the DH spot, including Justin Foscue, Ezequiel Duran, Josh Jung, Jake Burger and Corey Seager. The larger point is that the Rangers have cheaper alternatives, and that flexibility could matter more than Pederson’s name on the lineup card.
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For Texas, the uncomfortable part is not just that the post-title follow-up has fallen short of expectations. It is that the teams most important names have been tied up in the same familiar concerns: injuries, age and performance questions that have kept the Rangers from fully sustaining the standard they set after their World Series run. The front office now has to answer whether this core can still carry the club forward, or whether the next step requires something more dramatic than another year of hoping the same pieces hold together. [Read more 🡒]