Texas Rangers 2022 - 2023 Offseason Thread

[saddles]

Josh Hamilton, Johan Santana and Roberto Clemente were all Rule 5 picks.

 

[WilltheThrill]

Also, I’m getting greedy, but I still really want Rodon or Senga.

I want to see an Opening Day rotation of deGrom, Rodon, Perez, Gray, Heaney. I also want to see an upgrade at LF and 1-2 more relievers brought in so we never have to see the likes of Sborz or King ruining our games again.

 

[Hambombs]

Also, I’m getting greedy, but I still really want Rodon or Senga.

I want to see an Opening Day rotation of deGrom, Rodon, Perez, Gray, Heaney. I also want to see an upgrade at LF and 1-2 more relievers brought in so we never have to see the likes of Sborz or King ruining our games again.

I don’t think it’s greedy to me they need a #2 or better then we are talking. It’s well improved. But would like 2 shutdown guys

 

[saddles]

Sorry, but you’re not telling the whole truth about Heaney. He did not give up a lot of runs in his last 8 starts. From the time he returned from injury in July until the end of the season, his ERA was 3.77 and his WHIP was 1.15.

His last 8 starts occurred between August 13 and September 23. He pitched 36.2 innings and gave up 20 ER for an ERA of 4.91.

Twenty runs in thirty six and two thirds innings is "a lot of runs" to me. I was not being anything but truthful. I have no reason to lie.

 

[saddles]

But it feels like you made up your mind on him by glancing at a few cherry-picked stat lines

Lol, I could say the same about you. Just looking at 14 starts from last year could easily be called cherry picking. Especially when he put up an ERA of 4.91 in the last 8 of those.

 

[WilltheThrill]

His last 8 starts occurred between August 13 and September 23. He pitched 36.2 innings and gave up 20 ER for an ERA of 4.91.

Twenty runs in thirty six and two thirds innings is "a lot of runs" to me. I was not being anything but truthful. I have no reason to lie.

I’m definitely not accusing you of lying. But you’re cherry picking.

You can’t exclude his last two appearances from your “games started” list just because they TECHNICALLY weren’t “starts”. The Dodgers used an opener for those two games, but Heaney still was essentially the starter after he took a ver in the 2nd inning.

Also, in his last 8 appearances/starts, he allowed 18 earned runs, not 20. And that run of 8 appearances includes the one awful game of 6 earned runs. Take away his one awful outing (which almost every pitcher has), and he allowed 12 earned runs over his last 7 starts, or less than 2 runs per appearance. I also question why you went with the random number of 8 starts. Why not 4 or 7 or 10 or 15? Picking a random subset of starts for any pitcher can skew data if that subset includes an outlier.

 

[WilltheThrill]

Lol, I could say the same about you. Just looking at 14 starts from last year could easily be called cherry picking. Especially when he put up an ERA of 4.91 in the last 8 of those.

Uh, no. I didn’t just cherry pick. I literally went with every single appearance he made from the time he returned from the DL mid-season. The entire list of them. If you want, we can include the entire season. That would only make his numbers look even better. You’re the one who strangely cut it off at “last 8 starts” and conveniently excluded his last 2 starts because he didn’t pitch the 1st inning of those games.

I find it curious you stopped at the number 8, because the 3 starts right before that he allowed 0, 1, and 0.

 

[DTC]

Also, I’m getting greedy, but I still really want Rodon or Senga.

I want to see an Opening Day rotation of deGrom, Rodon, Perez, Gray, Heaney. I also want to see an upgrade at LF and 1-2 more relievers brought in so we never have to see the likes of Sborz or King ruining our games again.

Rangers are currently at $199,000,0000 as far as luxury tax payroll goes.
Wonder if they’re comfortable going up to $230 million..
Arbitration will go up over the next year or so for some players but then others will fall off as well, like Brad Miller, Possibly Perez, Heaney & Leclerc too.. that’s about $42 million..

 

[Kelleyman]

Rangers are currently at $199,000,0000 as far as luxury tax payroll goes.
Wonder if they’re comfortable going up to $230 million..
Arbitration will go up over the next year or so for some players but then others will fall off as well, like Brad Miller, Possibly Perez, Heaney & Leclerc too.. that’s about $42 million..

Is this not the highest Ranger salary ever?

 

[WilltheThrill]

Is this not the highest Ranger titsl
Salary ever?

I believe so. But it’s apparently silly season with Ray Davis, so who knows what his new ceiling is?

 

[Kelleyman]

Yes they share the NY a state of mind

 

[WilltheThrill]

Yes they share the NY a state of mind

Spoiler alert: their “thoughts” will be that Aaron Judge is the greatest player in the history of the game and the fact that he signed for “only” $400 Million proves that all of the greats wants to play in New York. Then they’ll say that Justin Verlander is a far superior pitcher to the overrated bum Jacob deGrom.

 

[saddles]

Uh, no. I didn’t just cherry pick. I literally went with every single appearance he made from the time he returned from the DL mid-season. The entire list of them. If you want, we can include the entire season. That would only make his numbers look even better. You’re the one who strangely cut it off at “last 8 starts” and conveniently excluded his last 2 starts because he didn’t pitch the 1st inning of those games.

I find it curious you stopped at the number 8, because the 3 starts right before that he allowed 0, 1, and 0.

I meant just using one of his seasons, a very limited one at that, can be called cherry picking. He has a whole career to look at.

I went with his last starts because it could represent a trend where other teams started making adjustments.

You are saying more or less that his 2022 season as a whole is a new trend. I am just pointing out that it could be that the trend could have been short-lived. Like I said yesterday, we are going to get an upclose look at the answer to the matter.

DTC asked a question about how we felt about Heaney before we signed him and I simply answered him, and have since given my reasons. My feelings about not wanting him had as much to do with him wanting 3 or 4 years as anything. That turned out to be a complete non factor. I am fine with him being an intermittent place holder for a year or so.

 

[WilltheThrill]

I meant just using one of his seasons, a very limited one at that, can be called cherry picking. He has a whole career to look at.

I went with his last starts because it could represent a trend where other teams started making adjustments.

You are saying more or less that his 2022 season as a whole is a new trend. I am just pointing out that it could be that the trend could have been short-lived. Like I said yesterday, we are going to get an upclose look at the answer to the matter.

DTC asked a question about how we felt about Heaney before we signed him and I simply answered him, and have since given my reasons. My feelings about not wanting him had as much to do with him wanting 3 or 4 years as anything. That turned out to be a complete non factor. I am fine with him being an intermittent place holder for a year or so.

Fair enough. I’m not trying to pick on you or start something because I really respect your knowledge and takes on here. And I’m not some huge Andrew Heaney fan-boy. I know his risks and red flags. I just happen to have watched almost every pitch the guy threw last season because he was at the back end of my rotation on my $10k prize pool fantasy team (and when you’re stupid enough to play for crazy money like I do, you have to do things like stay up late watching every pitch and at-bat your guys have). So Heaney happens to be one of the players in MLB I have more knowledge about compared to other players. I’m not doing backflips we signed him, but at the same time I do know enough about him to confidently say that his new approach and repertoire have improved his overall performance and that he is unquestionably light years better than most of the options we’ve used to fill out the back end of the rotation over the past 5 years. Plus, as you accurately pointed out, 4 years would have been too much for a guy with his baggage and our prospects coming up. But 2 years at $12.5 Million is extremely team-friendly.

Give him a chance and I think you will be pleasantly surprised at what he brings to the back end of the rotation.

 

[Kelleyman]

Spoiler alert: their “thoughts” will be that Aaron Judge is the greatest player in the history of the game and the fact that he signed for “only” $400 Million proves that all of the greats wants to play in New York. Then they’ll say that Justin Verlander is a far superior pitcher to the overrated bum Jacob deGrom.

They already said he was the better pick up

 

[Kelleyman]

Ha I could not handle the fantasy sports scene with a family and all my waiver moves and analysis including video. I have since retired Lol. @WilltheThrill

I do know it takes work so respect for that

 

[WilltheThrill]

Ha I could not handle the fantasy sports scene with a family and all my waiver moves and analysis including video. I have since retired Lol. @WilltheThrill

I do know it takes work so respect for that

It takes too much work, if I’m being honest. And I need to scale back at some point as well. Between job and family and fantasy, I haven’t had any time to post on here in like over a year. But this off-season has been too crazy not to make time to hop on here and share in the craziness that Ray Davis and CY have going on.

 

[saddles]

Ha I could not handle the fantasy sports scene with a family and all my waiver moves and analysis including video. I have since retired Lol. @WilltheThrill

I do know it takes work so respect for that

I played both fantasy baseball and football for several years. The first fantasy football team I had included Herschel Walker, as a Cowboy. The first fantasy baseball team was back when we were on the DMN site, prior to the ESPN Dallas site and this one. I decided not to do either in 2020 and have not done it since.

 

[Hambombs]

 

[DTC]

I meant just using one of his seasons, a very limited one at that, can be called cherry picking. He has a whole career to look at.

I went with his last starts because it could represent a trend where other teams started making adjustments.

You are saying more or less that his 2022 season as a whole is a new trend. I am just pointing out that it could be that the trend could have been short-lived. Like I said yesterday, we are going to get an upclose look at the answer to the matter.

DTC asked a question about how we felt about Heaney before we signed him and I simply answered him, and have since given my reasons. My feelings about not wanting him had as much to do with him wanting 3 or 4 years as anything. That turned out to be a complete non factor. I am fine with him being an intermittent place holder for a year or so.

The only reason I see it as a new trend he maybe on is because his pitch repertoire is different.

He went from throwing a sinker, Change up and Curveball with poor results to now throwing a fastball/slider combo almost exclusively. A handful of pitcher have done this with great success.
Before players could just sit on his breaking balls , now they’re having to hit either a hard fastball up in the zone or a nasty slider. Much harder to do.