It’s been a fairly atypical off-season for the Rangers from the standpoint of roster reconstruction, as the heaviest of the organization’s lifting for 2016 took place way back in July. The winter has been relatively slow on a recent Rangers scale, but that’s largely because the blueprint the front office had drawn up for building this season’s club was executed on a few months early, and thankfully so.
Some take the short-sighted view that categorizes Cole Hamels and Jake Diekman and Sam Dyson as ancient acquisition history — perhaps understandably, as those three gave the pennant race some added fuel without which 162+ almost certainly doesn’t happen in 2015 — but the fact is that Hamels and Diekman and Dyson were targeted because they offered Texas years of club control that other players on that month’s trade market (free agents-to-be David Price and Johnny Cueto and Tyler Clippard and Joakim Soria, for example) did not. Those three are key pieces to the 2016 puzzle, and well beyond that (Texas controls Diekman through 2018, Hamels through 2019, Dyson through 2020).
We are fans, however, of the greatest transaction sport, the one with the hottest stove, and this winter was no different from most in terms of the emails and tweets I’d get demanding that Texas sign this starting pitcher or that corner bat or anyone else with an impact profile or a dash of upside.
Setting aside the Hamels/Diekman/Dyson point for a minute, and even the budgetary line that Jon Daniels says the club has already butted up against, there’s a factor that I think tends to get minimized — if not overlooked — when it comes to the free agent market.
To illustrate the point I’m going to try to make, let’s look back at Mike Napoli for a minute.
There’s not a Rangers fan who didn’t want that guy back here. His bat came back alive after he returned to Texas in August, doing damage at a .295/.396/.513 level that (granted, in a small sample size) he hadn’t posted since his 2011 breakout with the Rangers. He gave the Rangers clubhouse a huge energy boost, in the words of the manager and the general manager and any number of players. He offers a right-handed bat and this is a team that leans heavily to the left, and will only get leftier as it graduates its top hitting prospects to the big leagues. And at his age and career path, it seemed appropriate to assume Napoli wouldn’t command more than a one-year deal.
A perfect fit, it seemed.
Until he signed with Cleveland in mid-December, for one year and $7 million (with an added $3 million in plate appearance incentives).
I’m still getting emails from fans who are upset that “Texas let that happen.”
Those folks aren’t considering one really important factor.
The player.
Imagine you’re Napoli. You love it here. You play well here. Your welcome mat here is like no other welcome mat with your name on it.
But it’s not as if you believe your career is a year from expiration.
Yes, your name was in the lineup just about every day in August, September, and October, and that Texas lineup is basically the same going into 2016.
But this team has a fulltime DH.
And a fulltime first baseman.
And that left field experiment in September . . . was probably just that.
There was no solid promise of everyday 2016 at-bats here for Napoli.
The only other legitimate big league first baseman on the Indians’ roster is Carlos Santana. And he’s going to be Cleveland’s everyday DH.
Which is where Napoli can hit on days Terry Francona wants to give Santana a day with the glove on.
Maybe Texas did make real overtures to Napoli this winter. But stand in his shoes: Doesn’t it stand to reason that this wasn’t the best fit for him — unless he’d exhausted his search for an everyday role elsewhere and couldn’t find one?
Hey, I would have loved bringing on-base machine John Jaso (Pittsburgh, two years and $8 million) in here.
But as his time behind the plate diminishes, why would he have chosen Texas? As a left-handed hitter, he wouldn’t take at-bats away from Fielder or Moreland.
Doug Fister at one year and $7 million, which is what he got from Houston?
I would have really liked Fister here, but if his best offers were for one year, wouldn’t he want a situation going into next winter’s relatively thin starting pitcher market where he could be relatively assured of 30 starts this season if healthy?
Hamels, Derek Holland, Martin Perez, Colby Lewis, and — in May — Yu Darvish.
Who would Fister have figured he was a safe bet to unseat here? You don’t sign somewhere basing your opportunity on a teammate getting hurt.
Unless that’s what you have to do.
A.J. Griffin didn’t have the luxury of weighing offers of a rotation spot to lose, like Fister had. Griffin’s last big league appearance was in 2013. He’s logged 14.1 minor league innings since. With his medical chart, he wasn’t going to get a big league contract from anyone this winter.
But for Griffin, could you ask for more than a non-roster opportunity that includes a real chance to win a rotation spot in camp (while Darvish is rehabbing)?
Right-handed hitter Justin Ruggiano can play all three outfield spots, but he wasn’t going to get the $5.25 million (up to $6.475 million after incentives) that Rajai Davis got from Cleveland. You can bet there were other opportunities for a legitimate center fielder who hits lefties well to take the $1.65 million base contract (only $500,000 guaranteed) that he accepted from Texas.
But, even setting aside the geographical allure, the Rangers offer Ruggiano an opportunity to play the most significant role he’s played in three years, as long as he produces. Left field is either wide open or in need of the right-handed half of a platoon, depending on how you feel about Angels consignment piece Josh Hamilton’s status, and it’s hard to imagine there’s a team out there — certainly no other contending team (a role with whom would diminish the odds of having your family traded mid-season) — offering better possibilities.
Why did catchers Bobby Wilson and Michael McKenry choose minor league deals with Texas?
For one, Robinson Chirinos isn’t a 130-game catcher, and Chris Gimenez, despite coming off a really solid season (his best), has spent a career on a journeyman’s path. There’s a chance to win a backup job here.
Plus, after his solid work last summer, Wilson has a familiarity factor with and – presumably – the trust of Jeff Banister. As does McKenry, who spent 2011, 2012, and 2013 with the Pirates.
Tony Barnette doesn’t really fit the analysis as cleanly as the others, as the Rangers’ bullpen is already deep and this is nonetheless the organization he chose for his second run at the big leagues after spending six years in Japan — unless Colby Lewis blazing that trail before him was enough inspiration to tip the scales. (Kidding, sort of.)
Lewis, on the other hand, fits the profile perfectly. Unlike Napoli, there’s a fairly clear role here for Lewis to claim, aside from the hundred other reasons Lewis and Texas have a rock-solid baseball marriage that has only gotten stronger since his second run with this franchise was arranged six years ago.
Which brings me to the one player I’m still thinking about as camp is now less than a week away.
I will never not want Cliff Lee to wear the Ranger uniform again.
Is he healthy?
Nobody knows yet, as he hasn’t thrown for teams this winter (unlike Tim Lincecum, for instance).
Does he still want to pitch?
Apparently he does, at least according to his agent.
Would he want to be here?
Don’t know, but you would think the chance to win, in a place he’s won before, with his former teammate Hamels now part of the picture, would check a few boxes. He’s not at a point in his career where Hamels is, but as long as he’s healthy, he’ll have options.
I’m not sure the chance to compete for and hold down a rotation spot while Darvish mends fits Lee’s idea of where he fits on a big league club right now. He’s not going to be money-whipped — certainly not here — but he’s made so much cash in his career that an offer from one team guaranteeing $2 million more than another shouldn’t tip the scales, one would think.
It’s probably going to come down to where Lee feels he has the best shot at making starts for a team he wants to be part of. For Lee, it’s likely all about opportunity — just like it was for Napoli, and Fister, and Griffin, and Ruggiano, and McKenry.
The reality is that if Lee shows teams he’s healthy and the ball’s coming out of his hand well, he’ll probably have better options — like Napoli weighing Cleveland against Texas — and if he’s not healthy enough to start camp on track with the rest of the pitchers, Texas doesn’t make a whole lot of sense either, as the primary opportunity here is more likely to be right out of the gate, when at least Darvish is still sidelined.
As much as I hold out hope, it’s a longshot.
Here’s the thing: Griffin and Ruggiano weren’t the only free agents out there who fit what the Rangers needed and what they could afford — but a free agent deal has to make sense for both sides, not just the team’s, and in Griffin and Ruggiano’s cases it absolutely did. Others, not so much.
I doubt we’ll see a second Rangers stint for Lee, but I wouldn’t rule it out — nor would I rule out a third run here for Napoli, as I stick with my spitball prediction two months ago that Texas, this coming July 20, will send 20-year-old righthander Jonathan Hernandez to the Indians for Napoli.
But trades are different. With few exceptions (Hamels being among them), players don’t have a say. It takes two sides to get a trade done, obviously, but unless the player wields a no-trade clause or owns 10/5 rights (10 years of big league service and at least the last five with the same team, giving him full trade veto power), he doesn’t get to decide where to play, or where not to.
There are two sides involved in a free agent deal as well, and one of those seems like it frequently gets overlooked — not the team assessing whether it can afford the player or how the makeup of its roster would benefit from his addition, but instead the player, and whether he sees that team as his best available opportunity, at that stage of his career, to be productive and make himself just a little more indispensable going forward.