Newsflash: this team is just not good. But at least they're giving us something to keep up with in the summer months. Its way better than being 20 games under and 10+ games out of the playoffs already, as we have seen so many years here.

The Rangers have promoted catcher Malcolm Moore to Double-A Frisco. He will be there today for the Riders 11 am CT game.

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) June 16, 2026

Because we've had a couple of long discussions on salary caps, competitive balance etc. I put together a couple of quick stats that I thought were interesting so far this year.


Of the top 25 hitters in the league this year by WAR, only 7 are guys who signed free agent contracts above $100 million dollars. (I'm excepting out guys like Witt who extended pre-arbitration and who still would not have reached free agency) And it's only 3 of the top 15. In fact the list is dominated by really young players.

Of the top 40 pitchers by WAR, only 8 are guys who signed free agent contracts above $100 million dollars.

So what's the point? Well if the argument is that the richest teams have an unfair advantage by being able to buy up the best players in the league, the data above pretty much contradicts that by showing that the vast majority of the best players in the league are guys who have never signed a big free agent contract of the type that has fans all up in arms. And if you went line by line, you'd in fact see that almost all of the guys are pre-Free Agency, meaning that all teams had an equal chance to draft/international sign these guys. The data just does not support the idea that money whipping older free agents gets you access to the best players. In fact the data proves the huge risk you take by paying 30 million to one player. Byrce Harper, Corey Seager, Manny Machado, Kyle Tucker, Dansby Swanson, Willy Adames, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Fernando Tatis, Mookie Betts (although injured a bunch), etc. are among the worst regulars in the league this year.

And this is the real reason why the owners want the salary cap, not the altruistic protection of the game they keep claiming. No, it's because they keep handing these contracts out and the players can never live up to them. They want the salary cap purely to limit their own mistakes by artificially setting a cap on what a player can earn. They know that once a cap is in place, there will never again be contracts like what Judge, Soto and Ohtani signed.


Finally, the Dodgers only have 2 of the best 50 pitchers by WAR and 3 of the top 50 hitters by WAR. Although... to be fair Ohtani is one of the pitchers and one of the hitters, so they only have 4 players really, and two of them (Pages and Muncy) are not hot shot free agents. It's just Ohtani and Yamamoto who are paying off so far for the Dodgers this year.