***** Official 2019/2020 Texas Rangers Off Season Thread *****

234,776 Views | 2466 Replies | Last: 3 yr ago by Aggie_3
wbt5845
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I guess our philosophy is that we now shouldn't have to tank like Oakland and Tampa do. We're a large market with large cash flow due to a shiny new palace.

If Allard and Burke are the real deals, one FA signing makes us downright salty at SP. Bullpens can be assembled.

So then we're back to seeing whether our position players are the real deal forgetting us to the promised land. The big question marks (imho) are C, 3B and CF. If the answers turn out to be Trevino/Huff, Jung and Taveras, we could be really good, being able to use FA $ elsewhere.
Squirrel Master
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wbt5845 said:

The big question marks (imho) are C, 3B and CF. If the answers turn out to be Trevino/Huff, Jung and Taveras, we could be really good, being able to use FA $ elsewhere.
Huff, Jung, and Taveras aren't 2020 contributors, atleast to open the season.

I don't see how you could say there is an internal option to fill 3B (in 2020), beyond the likes of IKF, Santana, and Solak.

Until they have a better option (and clear the glut of corner guys), I'm fine with Gallo playing lots of CF with DeShields getting starts a couple days a week.

I'm good with Trevino being the primary catcher.

Grapesoda2525
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wbt5845 said:

I guess our philosophy is that we now shouldn't have to tank like Oakland and Tampa do. We're a large market with large cash flow due to a shiny new palace.

If Allard and Burke are the real deals, one FA signing makes us downright salty at SP. Bullpens can be assembled.

So then we're back to seeing whether our position players are the real deal forgetting us to the promised land. The big question marks (imho) are C, 3B and CF. If the answers turn out to be Trevino/Huff, Jung and Taveras, we could be really good, being able to use FA $ elsewhere.
Second base will be a problem next year.
DallasAg 94
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wbt5845
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Names I mentioned were pieces of the future - didnt mean to suggest they'd be there for 2020. I'm really excited about Jung though.
DallasAg 94
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Grapesoda2525
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If you guys are watching the World Series,

This 7th inning in game 2 is a thing of beauty! Cabrera came up with a huge hit. I guess I don't mind losing him for nothing if he plays well in this series.
KT 90
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Kind of mind boggling to think that someone the Rangers cut earlier this season is starting in the World Series. He did look like he had ankle weights on trying to field a couple of those pop fly/dinker hits to RF by the Astros earlier this game.
vwbug
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I do wish they would have made the new place not look SO much like Astros. It's very similar.

New uniforms in 2020? Has anyone seen anything on that?
Fuzzy Dunlop
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I really liked Cabrera on the Rangers this year. He served us well and when it was time to go with the youth movement he had to go. Glad he's doing well tonight. I'm pretty sure he had a hit last night too.
94chem
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I wish no ill on Houston, but I just can't make myself get emotionally invested to root for them. I am a baseball fan, though, and I'm happy for Cabrera to have this success.

Also, I watched the NL playoffs, and I'm happy to see Houston learn what's been pretty obvious to everybody else for several months - the Nationals are good.

I was listening to Houston radio talk about how it would be a huge upset, one of the biggest ever, if Houston doesn't win the series. I'm just thinking, it's never "huge" upset if you lose to a team with Strasburg and Scherzer. These teams are pretty evenly matched.
Fuzzy Dunlop
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I saw a stat yesterday that showed the Nats had one more win than the Astros from May 24 to Sep 30. Pretty even teams if you ask me and no reason to call it an upset if the Nats win.

I can't stand the Astros, mostly because of their obnoxious fans (not all of them are obnoxious but the ones that are obnoxious are terrible and rival Cubs and Yankees fans) and some of their dbag players (Cole and Bregman.) I know if they were on my team though, I'd love them. Houston management makes questionable personnel decisions (Osuna) and the recent dust up with SI (that I actually think is overblown and BS.).

They actually remind me of t.u., their fan base, and administration.
Danny Vermin
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F the Astros and their trash fans. I hope the Nats sweep their sorry asses.
94chem
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I think most people in Houston know that Bregman is a d-bag, but as you say, it doesn't matter when he's your d-bag.

Cabrera with another RBI.
Grapesoda2525
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94chem said:

I wish no ill on Houston, but I just can't make myself get emotionally invested to root for them. I am a baseball fan, though, and I'm happy for Cabrera to have this success.

Also, I watched the NL playoffs, and I'm happy to see Houston learn what's been pretty obvious to everybody else for several months - the Nationals are good.

I was listening to Houston radio talk about how it would be a huge upset, one of the biggest ever, if Houston doesn't win the series. I'm just thinking, it's never "huge" upset if you lose to a team with Strasburg and Scherzer. These teams are pretty evenly matched.
I've rooted for the rockets against golden state the last few years, but Astro fans are insufferable Jack azzes. Nearly every single day the trash talking thread gets bumped by someone with the maturity of a 10 year old, they usually have some obscure fact or some childish comment to make us look as badly as possible.

Reid Ryan is a jerk. We wouldn't go along with his plan during hurricane harvey because it would've inconvenienced our season ticket holders. That's fine, I don't care where their home games were played, but this idiot actually took it to the media and tried his best to make our team look as badly as possible. He only has his job with the Astros because of his daddy. They also asked the Astros why they played at the trop and their main motivation was " we didn't want to give the rangers more games at their stadium and help them make the wild card"

Houston texan fans seem to have some strange fixation with the Dallas Cowboys. We are not rivals. We don't have any playoff history. We barely play each other in meaningful games. Why do they hate our team so much? We haven't given them a reason.

We'll see what happens. The Astros still have the best team, but they've dug themselves into quite a hole and I'm lovin it.
94chem
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Well, as good as they are, the window seems to be closing. With Keuchel and Morton gone, and McCullers uncertain, it's interesting how quickly they've gone from having a stable full of young arms to having the top 3 arms on the staff being hired guns. They are going to be piecing together some starting pitching (like everybody else), and having to rely on their pen more, which needs to get a lot better. The lineup will still be strong for several years and they will pile up wins against the back ends of rotations, but they will have a looming pitching crisis like the Rangers when they finally had to part with Hamels and Darvish. Every window closes; the Astros should enjoy it and not talk so much trash.
KT 90
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I should go to bed, but can't turn it off. Hoping for another Nat HR so I can watch them celebrate in the dugout. They have fun, and it reflects in their play. They are playing well, obviously.
KT 90
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KT 90 said:

I should go to bed, but can't turn it off. Hoping for another Nat HR so I can watch them celebrate in the dugout. They have fun, and it reflects in their play. They are playing well, obviously.


And there it is! Taylor goes yard and the party is on again
Grapesoda2525
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I hope that fat jerk reid Ryan is enjoying the show.

Really hate that guy.
aggietony2010
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Grapesoda2525 said:

94chem said:

I wish no ill on Houston, but I just can't make myself get emotionally invested to root for them. I am a baseball fan, though, and I'm happy for Cabrera to have this success.

Also, I watched the NL playoffs, and I'm happy to see Houston learn what's been pretty obvious to everybody else for several months - the Nationals are good.

I was listening to Houston radio talk about how it would be a huge upset, one of the biggest ever, if Houston doesn't win the series. I'm just thinking, it's never "huge" upset if you lose to a team with Strasburg and Scherzer. These teams are pretty evenly matched.
I've rooted for the rockets against golden state the last few years, but Astro fans are insufferable Jack azzes. Nearly every single day the trash talking thread gets bumped by someone with the maturity of a 10 year old, they usually have some obscure fact or some childish comment to make us look as badly as possible.

Reid Ryan is a jerk. We wouldn't go along with his plan during hurricane harvey because it would've inconvenienced our season ticket holders. That's fine, I don't care where their home games were played, but this idiot actually took it to the media and tried his best to make our team look as badly as possible. He only has his job with the Astros because of his daddy. They also asked the Astros why they played at the trop and their main motivation was " we didn't want to give the rangers more games at their stadium and help them make the wild card"

Houston texan fans seem to have some strange fixation with the Dallas Cowboys. We are not rivals. We don't have any playoff history. We barely play each other in meaningful games. Why do they hate our team so much? We haven't given them a reason.

We'll see what happens. The Astros still have the best team, but they've dug themselves into quite a hole and I'm lovin it.


The Houston/Dallas dynamic is really strange. Both are huge cities with everything you could ever want. Both have some decent sports history, (dallas with the obvious edge in football, Houston with the edge in baseball, and both playing second fiddle to SA in basketball), but for some reason Houston has an inferiority complex I don't understand.

I grew up in El Paso, and wound up a Rangers fan via my grandma. I work in Houston now. I had a coworker ask me why I wasn't an Astros fan. I told him why, and he said something about Dallas. I mentioned that I never understood why people from Houston feel a need to justify themselves as equal or superior to Dallas.

He said it wasn't like that. That he had some jerks from Dallas he met in college that soured him on Dallas, and then he spent the better part of a morning providing evidence that Houston was better than Dallas. All he really did was prove my point.
Fuzzy Dunlop
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I grew up 2 hours from Dallas and have never been a Cowboys fan. I grew up a Redskins fan. It wasn't that difficult because it was the 80's and the Cowboys were mediocre while the Redskins were good winning three Super Bowls in 20 years. I also wasn't a Oilers fan. I don't care about the NBA or NHL and really don't care for the NFL. But I love baseball and have been a Rangers fan since I knew what they were in about 1979. The Astros were insignificant until they moved to the AL and their fans suddenly thought they were something. I actually hope they move back to the NL someday just so I can go back to ignoring them.
Rossko
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Rendon would look great penciled in at the 5 hitting 3rd in 2020 at the new park.
DannyDuberstein
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I'm class of 96, so was at A&M during the Cowboys triplets run. I grew up indifferent about Houston sports teams. At one point I had a Colts .45s throwback hat because I thought it was cool. But the hatred toward Dallas I saw during my time in school was disturbingly fascinating and eye opening. And to this day, as much as I hate to say it, I think Houston Aggies are some of the worst as far as inferiority complexes go. There's a historical double dose of underperformance, and in good times or bad, the worst of little man syndrome just bubbles up.
DannyDuberstein
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Yeah, the Nats were 12 games under .500 on May 23. To win 93 games from that position is friggin incredible. This is no fluke. They've been playing great baseball for 5 months now, every bit on par with what the Astros did this season.
wbt5845
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vwbug said:

I do wish they would have made the new place not look SO much like Astros. It's very similar.

New uniforms in 2020? Has anyone seen anything on that?
This has been discussed. They don't look similar - see pictures earlier on this thread. Quit being a lemming.
wbt5845
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There was a good segment on The Ticket yesterday about liking the Astros (the players) but being annoyed by their fans. They have WAY too many years watching Dallas area sports teams win such that they HAVE to brag extra hard right now.

Yeah, the economics of baseball is already starting to erode them, just as it did the Rangers after 2012. When I mention this to friends in Houston, the response is "naw we sell out every game we got tons of money to sign whoever we want".

Yeah, right.

And I too heard this suggestion that Washington winning would be the "upset of the century". Uh, not so much. When your two aces get beat to go down 0-2, that means the other team is good.
Grapesoda2525
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wbt5845 said:

There was a good segment on The Ticket yesterday about liking the Astros (the players) but being annoyed by their fans. They have WAY too many years watching Dallas area sports teams win such that they HAVE to brag extra hard right now.

Yeah, the economics of baseball is already starting to erode them, just as it did the Rangers after 2012. When I mention this to friends in Houston, the response is "naw we sell out every game we got tons of money to sign whoever we want".

Yeah, right.

And I too heard this suggestion that Washington winning would be the "upset of the century". Uh, not so much. When your two aces get beat to go down 0-2, that means the other team is good.
I think the results speak for themselves so far. To be honest, that has to hurt more than anything else. They couldn't have had 2 better pitchers start those first 2 games at home.

The radio segment is pretty spot on, like I said earlier In this thread, I rooted for the rockets and James harden against the warriors every single time because it was conceivable that they could win and the warriors were the most obnoxious NBA team ever.

I just can't do it with the Texans and Astros tho. The Texans fans hate us for no reason at all and I wouldn't mind seeing that team never get a super bowl. The Astros have had an amazing team the last 5 years or so and all of these jokers are popping up out of nowhere talking trash when they were silent as a grave 5 years ago and resorted to the same things ranger fans do now. Which is just hope our team gets better and their team doesn't win it all.
Proposition Joe
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I root for the Texans and Rockets (as long as they aren't playing the Cowboys/Mavs).

I can't bring myself to ever root for the Astros. As others have said, the Reid Ryan hurricane angle they played with the media was just sad... it's not surprising to see them now get called out for this latest thing with the assistant GM. It's like the way they run their PR department is similar to how they run their team "analytically what response gives us the best chance of winning?"

But ultimately it probably comes down to how they constructed their team. Was it within the rules? Sure. Was it in the spirit of the game? Eh, I don't really care about trying to define that type stuff. But when you're purposely really, really bad over a long-stretch just to open up a window for success later, it's hard to get behind it... Astros brass and it's fans seem like they would take the side of Rachel Phelps in Major League and explain to everyone what she was doing with the Indians was actually the smart move.
DallasAg 94
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Grapesoda2525
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DallasAg 94 said:

Realistically, this is likely their last year.

They have $156M committed to 8 players for 2020, and $119M committed for 2021.

Signed:
Greinke (36-SP): $35M, $35M
Verlander (36-SP): $33M, $33M
Altuve: $29.2M, $29.2M
Brantley (32-LF): $16M, FA
Bregman: $13M, $13M
Reddick (32-OF): $13M
Pressley (30): $8.7M, $8.7M
Gurriel (35-1B): $8.4M, FA

Arbs:
Diaz: A1, A2 <- $2M in 2019
Correa: A2, A3 <- $5M in 2019
Osuna: A2, A3: 66G, 2.63 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, 38 Sv, <- $6.5M in 2019
Osuna: $300K charity giving for 1 battered baby-momma
Springer (30-OF): A4, FA <- $12M in 2019
Peacock: A4, FA <- $3M in 2019
So, that is $28.5M + $300K in 2019 salaries, up for Arb in 2020.

$186M, with the following FAs to replace:

FAs:
Cole (SP): 33GS, 2.50 ERA, 0.89 WHIP
Miley (SP): 33GS, 3.98 ERA, 1.34 WHIP

Chirinos (35-C): 114G, .238, 17 HR
Harris (35-RP): 68G, 1.50 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, 26H
Maldonado (33-C)
McHugh
Rondon (31-RP): 62G, 3.71 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 19H
Smith

Their 2019 WS hinges on Greinke who, in 3GS this post-season has a 6.43 ERA and a 1.43 WHIP. Yikes.
I keep silently rooting for Verlanders skills to diminish. He's a great talent and I'm happy for him that he got a World Series even if it's with the Astros, but he's also one of the main things keeping them relevant. They never sniffed a championship before they got him.

He will be a first ballot hall of famer and deservedly so, but he can't go wrong with retiring and choosing to hang out with his extremely attractive wife hopefully.
wbt5845
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Houston's model was to tank - COMPLETELY tank - and sell off all their decent major league pitchers. Then basically play your AAA club at the MLB level. Then as they matured, go ahead and sign a few key FAs to round it out. Worked great.

Problem with that model - all the arbitration and new FAs are coming due at the same time. I know they paid Altuve and Bregman - who else have they gotten signed?
South Platte
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wbt5845 said:

Houston's model was to tank - COMPLETELY tank - and sell off all their decent major league pitchers. Then basically play your AAA club at the MLB level. Then as they matured, go ahead and sign a few key FAs to round it out. Worked great.

Problem with that model - all the arbitration and new FAs are coming due at the same time. I know they paid Altuve and Bregman - who else have they gotten signed?
The tanking helped only so much. They totally whiffed on Appel and Aiken. Give Luhnow a ton of credit for evaluating talent and signing the right players.

One could argue that outside of Correa, who is the least important player of their core, they unnecessarily lost games and could have built what they had with 70-win seasons. Altuve and Springer were drafted before they started tanking. They got Bregman only because Luhnow screwed up the Aiken pick, couldn't sign him, and got a compensation pick the following year. You have to be good and lucky to build what they have.
Proposition Joe
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South Platte said:

wbt5845 said:

Houston's model was to tank - COMPLETELY tank - and sell off all their decent major league pitchers. Then basically play your AAA club at the MLB level. Then as they matured, go ahead and sign a few key FAs to round it out. Worked great.

Problem with that model - all the arbitration and new FAs are coming due at the same time. I know they paid Altuve and Bregman - who else have they gotten signed?
The tanking helped only so much. They totally whiffed on Appel and Aiken. Give Luhnow a ton of credit for evaluating talent and signing the right players.

One could argue that outside of Correa, who is the least important player of their core, they unnecessarily lost games and could have built what they had with 70-win seasons. Altuve and Springer were drafted before they started tanking. They got Bregman only because Luhnow screwed up the Aiken pick, couldn't sign him, and got a compensation pick the following year. You have to be good and lucky to build what they have.

There's no doubt you can tank and still miss... There was absolutely not guarantee what they were doing would get them a championship caliber team.

But if you look at the contributors on the 2017 championship team, the difference was absolutely the players they gained from the tankjob (whether producing on the field or packaged in trades for productive players).
South Platte
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Proposition Joe said:

South Platte said:

wbt5845 said:

Houston's model was to tank - COMPLETELY tank - and sell off all their decent major league pitchers. Then basically play your AAA club at the MLB level. Then as they matured, go ahead and sign a few key FAs to round it out. Worked great.

Problem with that model - all the arbitration and new FAs are coming due at the same time. I know they paid Altuve and Bregman - who else have they gotten signed?
The tanking helped only so much. They totally whiffed on Appel and Aiken. Give Luhnow a ton of credit for evaluating talent and signing the right players.

One could argue that outside of Correa, who is the least important player of their core, they unnecessarily lost games and could have built what they had with 70-win seasons. Altuve and Springer were drafted before they started tanking. They got Bregman only because Luhnow screwed up the Aiken pick, couldn't sign him, and got a compensation pick the following year. You have to be good and lucky to build what they have.

There's no doubt you can tank and still miss... There was absolutely not guarantee what they were doing would get them a championship caliber team.

But if you look at the contributors on the 2017 championship team, the difference was absolutely the players they gained from the tankjob (whether producing on the field or packaged in trades for productive players).
I don't know why anybody would trade with Houston. Detroit and Pittsburgh got taken for a ride on those two trades, too early to tell on the Grienke trade. All these expert "farm team rankings" are total garbage. I'd just let that phone call go to voicemail if I'm the GM at any other MLB team. If a team offers X minor league players but says that Y players are off the block, don't accept the X players. Houston knew they were sending bags of dog crap to Detroit and Pittsburgh.


KT 90
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Quote:

Realistically, this is likely their last year.

They will still be good next year, how good probably depends on health of pitchers returning from injury: McCullers and Corbin Martin. but they will likely win the AL West again next year. After that, depends on how their young talent in the minors currently does at the MLB level (always a crapshoot) Obviously they can't re-sign all of their current players, they'll let Correa walk most likely, but they'll have more players looking to cash in and you can't sign them all.

 
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