Three areas the Texas Rangers need to address this off-season

With the MLB’s off-season right around the corner, the Texas Rangers definitely have some needs that they need to fill.

After posting the second worst record in the MLB for the 2020 campaign, there are a lot of needs that the Texas Rangers have to take care of before the 2021 season starts.

Starting Pitching

Lance Lynn has the top spot locked down for the Texas Rangers entering 2021, and you can expect to see Kyle Cody and Kyle Gibson also in the rotation.

The wild cards are Kolby Allard, who was very inconsistent, ranging from being horrible to solid in his starts, and the other is Jordan Lyles, who was awful, posting a 7.02 ERA.

An interesting player to keep an eye on will be Corey Kluber, who pitched one inning before missing the rest of the season due to injury. It is likely that the team will opt out of his deal, but they could try to reach a new one with him.

The Texas Rangers will likely look to add one player to a contract similar to what they have been signing guys to (around $10 million per season), and then maybe another guy to a very cheap deal or a Spring Training invite to try to make a push for that fifth spot in the rotation or a bullpen spot.

I would think that the team will likely look to sign two starters, but they will probably trend to the Spring Training type contracts, given that they have three pitchers making north of $8 million per season. And if they do elect to go with a signing similar to Lynn, Gibson and Lyles, they could potentially spend that kind of money on Kluber, which I would not be too upset with.

Relief Pitching

The bullpen for the team was tough to watch at times. But they did have a few players stand out as quality relievers for the future in Joely Rodriguez, Jonathan Hernandez, Rafael Montero, and Taylor Hearn.

Those first three players mentioned can likely be the team’s late inning trio to close out games for years to come, as they looked very solid during the season. Meanwhile, Hearn was primarily used to just pitch an inning, but he could be a guy that they use as a long-reliever, given that he spent time as a starter, in the Jesse Chavez role (I think it’s impossible to be worse than Chavez was in 2020).

But the team still needs some more relivers to be ready for the 2021 season, and you have to have a few guys that can at least be average for you, which they really lacked aside from the four guys mentioned earlier.

While the Texas Rangers probably won’t go out and spend big money by adding a big name reliever, they will probably look to add a few guys to cheap deals or Spring Training invites like they typically do, and potentially they could get one or two of them to be quality pitchers to fill out their bullpen.

And another big addition that they didn’t really have after the first week of the 2020 season will be the return of Jose Leclerc, which should help with the bullpen even more.

The Rangers have a really solid late-game bullpen, but their key is going to be to solidify that middle of the game bullpen, which is where they really struggled, and find players to stop the bleeding, to keep the score close to where they still have opportunities to win games.

Hitting

The offense for the Texas Rangers was atrocious to say the least.

In the 2020 season, the club posted the second lowest batting average and OPS in all of baseball, at .217 and .648, respectively. They need to figure things out at the plate if they are going to have any success at all.

I think it starts with Joey Gallo, but there are so many other names that can be mentioned that need to get drastically better for the team to have a chance to turn it around offensively in 2021.

If you count every player that played 10+ games for the team in 2020, they had ten players that hit below .200. That is an absurd number, and should be a major red flag to anyone within the organization.

Three areas the Texas Rangers need to address in the off-season

By Cody Smith | Oct 12, 2020

With the MLB’s off-season right around the corner, the Texas Rangers definitely have some needs that they need to fill.