Texas Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young has a busy winter ahead, and the path to calling it a successful offseason is pretty clear: get the payroll lighter, get the roster younger and stop asking so much of the same shaky spots.
That starts with the money. Texas needs more flexibility, and one obvious way to create it is moving one of its four highest-paid players - Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi, Corey Seager or Brandon Nimmo. All four are over 30, and together they’re set to make more than $113 million in 2027.
The catch, of course, is that none of those contracts is easy to move. deGrom and Eovaldi are in the final year of their deals, while Seager and Nimmo are tied up longer term. All four have no-trade clauses, so Texas would need one of them to agree to a deal before anything else could happen.
Of that group, Seager looks like the most realistic name to watch. He just picked up 10/5 rights and is due $31.5 million each of the next five years. That’s the kind of contract Texas would like to shed, and it’s also the one that could bring back the most talent in a trade.
The Rangers also need help in center field. Evan Carter, the current starter there, batted under .200 and continued to struggle against left-handed pitching. The problem got so bad that Texas ended the season using Ezequiel Duran in center against lefties.
Carter has nearly 800 MLB at-bats now, and 2027 is a major proving year for him. If he doesn’t take a step forward and the Rangers don’t have a reliable alternative, that’s a problem. Bringing in a center fielder who can start and put pressure on Carter is part of the fix.
First base is another spot that needs attention, even with Jake Burger’s power production. He led the Rangers with 28 home runs and 90 RBI, but the rest of the line was rough: a .228 average, a career-high 167 strikeouts and a .302 on-base percentage. That’s not the kind of offensive profile Texas is trying to build around.
The answer there isn’t necessarily a splashy signing. The Rangers need someone affordable who can compete with Burger and be ready to start if he wins the job. If that happens, Burger could move into a DH role.
Then there’s the rotation, where Texas can’t just hope for a bounce-back. Jack Leiter lost half the season to ankle surgery that corrected an extraneous bone affecting his mechanics.
Kumar Rocker, meanwhile, regressed after missing half of the 2025 season when he was optioned back to Triple-A. The two combined for nine wins, which is not nearly enough from the young arms Texas expected to take a step.
Young has already made it clear that four young players are supposed to move forward in 2027, with Leiter and Rocker among them. But after what happened in 2026, the Rangers can’t afford to simply trust that leap will come on its own.
That’s why free agency has to provide some insurance, even if the additions are modest. Re-signing Cal Quantrill and Jordan Montgomery would give Texas veteran depth at the back of the rotation and force Leiter and Rocker to either improve or head back to Triple-A to sort things out. Rolling into 2027 with those two again and no backup plan would be too risky.
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Texas also sent catcher Julian Brock and pitchers Alejandro Chiquillo and Mason McConnaughey to the desert, giving the club a useful look at a handful of young players it wants to keep moving forward. Kling, in particular, is the kind of prospect worth tracking closely, with a path that is expected to begin 2027 at Double-A Frisco and room to rise if he keeps producing. [Read more 🡒]