DALLAS — Let’s just call this Rangers’ winter spending spree — apparently an annual event now — what it is. It’s a heck of a lot of fun. From a business standpoint, it could evolve into a nightmare but let’s not go all glass-half-empty while owner Ray Davis is throwing his wallet around.
No one would describe overpaying Corey Seager and Marcus Semien to the tune of a $500 million to join a 100-loss team last winter as sound baseball management. So now the club has taken the next step, overpowering the market on injured pitchers to add Jacob deGrom, who is great when he pitches, and Andrew Heaney, who is occasionally fair.
Not to be a killjoy but the last time the Rangers took the plunge to get an injured pitcher with two Cy Young trophies on his mantle, they got one inning out of Corey Kluber. And gave up American League saves leader Emmanuel Clase in the process.
GM Chris Young did not have to sacrifice any young talent to add deGrom and Heaney and Jake Odorizzi to a rotation that now would fairly be regarded as above average — if everyone stays healthy. But keep in mind that Mets owner Steve Cohen is determined to outspend the baseball world to bring a World Series to Queens and that his club reportedly stopped at three years with deGrom, a truly beloved player in Citi Field.
The Rangers went five years with a club option for a sixth, and sometimes that’s what you just have to do to make a little noise. Especially after spending half a century in Arlington without producing a Cy Young winner of your own.
There was much talk the last two years of Young’s Highland Park relationship with Clayton Kershaw and how that might induce the Dodger great to finish his career in Arlington. Instead, he signed another short term deal with LA. Justin Verlander is three months older than deGrom. Verlander has more wear and tear, one could surmise, from throwing 1,400 more major league innings (including postseason), but Verlander was never obsessed with hitting triple digits on radar guns the way deGrom has done even late in his career.
Heaney, a left-hander, seemed to find something in limited work with the Dodgers in 2022. The Rangers hope so. In the AL in 2021, he had a 5.83 ERA over 23 starts.
I think it’s exciting for Rangers fans to be given the kind of hope that these moves generate. That’s the bottom line. Gathering pitchers is the most dangerous high wire act in team sports, and there is an awareness that money is a guarantee of nothing. When he pitches, deGrom is always good and frequently great. But with his Cy Young honors having been captured in 2018-19, he has averaged 12 starts the last three seasons while dealing with serious injuries to his right elbow and shoulder.
In 2027, Davis will be paying $84 million to a 39-year-old deGrom, 37-year-old Semien and 33-year-old Seager. If the Cowboys ever handed out guaranteed money in such a fashion, we’d be grabbing the defibrillators to apply to Stephen Jones.
That’s not to say it’s all wrong. The Rangers believe they have young pitching on the way after grabbing Vanderbilt’s Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker with high first-round picks, but no one expects them to arrive in top form in 2023. That’s down the line. So to the organization’s credit — mainly talking Davis here — the Rangers plunged forward to shape up their starting rotation with the same vigor they displayed in rebuilding their middle infield a year ago.
The somewhat predictable fallout in Texas’ favor from the deGrom signing was that the Mets would have to land an ace. Thus, Justin Verlander will win no more Cy Young awards for the Houston Astros. It’s hard to cut down a 38-game gap between the World Series winners and Texas in one offseason, but maybe the winter meeting madness has brought the Rangers within … 25 games of first?
Do I hear 20?
It’s weird, having grown up with one set of baseball numbers, to be told that so many of them are now considered meaningless. I understand it, but it’s still funny that the Rangers went all in to grab a pitcher for what will be his late-30s seasons who has never won more than 15 games. In case you forgot, deGrom won consecutive Cy Young Awards with sensational strikeout, WHIP and ERA numbers while winning 10 and 11 games.
I get it, the Mets had some horrific offense during part of deGrom’s nine seasons there but they weren’t always bad. They did go to a World Series in 2015. And they won 101 games this year, but then deGrom did not make his debut until August.
The Rangers are counting on seeing him much, much sooner in 2023 and getting more than that quality shutout inning they got from Kluber back in 2020. FanGraphs’ ZIPS projects deGrom to pitch 550 innings for the Rangers over five years.
They will need more than that for this to become more than a joyful winter meetings triumph.
