If the Rangers signaled their deadline strategy on Saturday with the acquisition of Max Scherzer, they reiterated it on Sunday, underscoring the point with yet another splashy deal. The message should be obvious: The Rangers are here to win. They feel this is their moment, and if their window of contention looked anything less than wide-open before, they’ve just pushed it open even wider.
The Rangers made a deal with the Cardinals on Sunday for some additional pitching. They’ll receive lefty starter Jordan Montgomery and righty reliever Chris Stratton in exchange for a prospect package of pitchers, Tekoah Roby and John King, and infielder Thomas Saggese. Like the Scherzer deal, this trade sees them paying a fairly high cost in prospects. But it seems like exactly the time for them to do that. The Rangers are in first place. Their farm system is deep. If they want to improve their chances of ending this season with not just a playoff run, but a trip to the World Series, this is how to do it.
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In Montgomery and Stratton, Texas will get some much-needed pitching depth. It’s not that the Rangers’ pitching has been bad; their 4.22 ERA (104 ERA+) is above league average. And the Rangers don’t exactly need their pitching to be exceptional, with one of the best offenses in baseball that offers more run support to their pitchers than any other team (5.8 runs per game). But this nonetheless stood out as a clear area to target for the deadline. Just look at their rotation: Texas’s biggest winter acquisition, Jacob deGrom, made just six starts before getting sidelined for the year and ultimately undergoing Tommy John surgery. The pitcher who stepped up as the ace in his stead, Nathan Eovaldi, hit the 10-day injured list with a forearm strain this week. And the back of this rotation has looked rather thin all season, with Martín Pérez and Andrew Heaney both struggling to replicate their performance from 2022. Looking ahead down the stretch and (especially) into the playoffs, Texas needed to give itself more options here.
Montgomery does that for the rotation. The lefty was the best trade chip the struggling Cardinals had to sell. The 30-year-old is having a career season, with a 3.42 ERA (126 ERA+), and he should very nicely slot into the top half of this rotation. He’s a rental—he’ll become a free agent this winter—but his track record of durability and consistency should pay off here. And while Montgomery is clearly the headliner here, Stratton brings some additional depth and experience to the bullpen, which is always in need down the stretch.
It’s true that the Rangers spent the winter bulking up their pitching staff and have now spent the deadline trying to bulk it up even more. But sometimes baseball works like that: deGrom was hurt fairly quickly; Eovaldi, for all his success this year, is currently on the IL; Heaney and Pérez never matched their outputs from last season. (All four were signed or re-signed this winter.) That the Rangers have been so successful this year, despite all of that, is a credit to their offense and the rest of their staff. And that the front office is now pushing in its chips to bolster the pitching for a stretch run is a credit to its belief in the team.
The Rangers have led the AL West for almost the entire season. (They spent just one day in second place—April 8—but won their next three games to rise back to first and never looked back.) But their lead has always been somewhat tenuous. The Astros sit only just behind them. To ensure the ability to make a playoff run, Texas needed more pitching. And now they have it.
