Yankees potential trade partner: Texas Rangers.
The defending champs have some impending free agents in their rotation and bullpen that they may be looking to trade.
Coming into the season, the Rangers were on top of the world. Just one year after consecutive 90-loss losses, Texas finished the season with 90 wins, and although they lost the AL West crown to the Astros on the final day of the season, it did not matter. They swept the Rays and Orioles in the first two rounds of the postseason, overcame those Astros in an epic seven-game ALCS, and dominated
the Diamondbacks for their first World Series title in franchise history. While Rangers fans were, of course, the most thrilled with the championship, New Yorkers were also as content as they could be considering the circumstances, as Texas had to take down two of the Yankees’ division rivals, plus their current archnemesis, to make it to the World Series, and then they took down a team that many still hold a grudge against from the 2001 World Series.
Fast forward to today, and things aren’t quite so rosy in Arlington. The Rangers enter today with a 42-48 record and stand 6.5 games behind the division-leading Seattle Mariners. and 7 games out of the third Wild Card spot. Overall, they’ve been the epitome of mid, coming in slightly below league average both on the mound and at the plate — a fact that can be seen in their 44-46 Pythagorean record.
Not surprisingly, it was reported yesterday that league executives believe the Rangers will be sellers at the deadline, with a small army of pitchers — Max Scherzer, Michael Lorenzen, Andrew Heaney, David Robertson, and All-Star closer Kirby Yates — expected to be the main pieces available via trade. Although general manager Chris Young indicated to reporters in Texas that the Rangers still hadn’t decided on a path at the deadline, as they are just one hot streak away from being back in the thick of the division race, this report nonetheless means that it’s worth diving into the Rangers roster to see who, if anybody, the Yankees might target.
Offensively, the answer is almost certainly nobody. Between big-ticket free agents Corey Seager and Marcus Semien and a small army in young players in third baseman Josh Smith, left fielder Wyatt Langford, and center fielder Leody Taveras, and veterans who still have multiple years of arbitration left in Nathaniel Lowe and Adolis Garcia, pretty much every hitter worth acquiring on the Rangers is under team control for the foreseeable future. Unless they plan to blow the whole thing up and start a full-scale rebuild — an unlikely proposition — there isn’t a team in the league, with perhaps the exception of the Orioles, with the prospect depth capable of prying one of these guys loose.
The pitching staff, however, is very much a different story. The Rangers have six pitchers who are unrestricted free agents at the end of the season (Scherzer, Heaney, Lorenzen, Yates, José Leclerc, and José Ureña), one who has a mutual option for 2025 (Robertson), and one who has a vesting option that he’s on pace to fall just short of (Nathan Eovaldi). That’s a lot of arms that could be on the move, for the right price.
With the exception of Leclerc and Heaney (it’s hard to imagine a reunion there), all of those pitchers would be big acquisitions for the Yankees. Although Scherzer has only thrown 16.1 innings across three starts due to offseason surgery to fix a herniated disk in his back, he would provide a seasoned postseason veteran to easily slot into the rotation. Lorenzen’s 3.21 ERA and Eovaldi’s 3.15 ERA meanwhile, are better than the ERA of every Yankees starter with the exception of the injured Clarke Schmidt. Robertson and Yates would provide the bullpen with the strikeout artist the team has lacking, as their 36.8 and 35.8 strikeout percentages rank seventh and ninth among qualified relievers; to put that in perspective, Luke Weaver’s 27.6 percent ranks 50th in the league — and highest on the Yankees.
It remains to be seen, of course, whether the Rangers will opt to trade some of their impending free agent pitchers, or if they will hold onto their pitchers in an effort to make a second-half push for a postseason spot. Perhaps they will even try to pave a middle road, trading some of their depth for future pieces, but not so many that the team puts up the white flag.
If either happens, Brian Cashman should be on the phone, trying to reinforce a rotation that has looked inconsistent of late and a bullpen that has looked downright disastrous. The lineup needs help, too, but that doesn’t mean the staff should be ignored.
