ARLINGTON, Texas — Baseball season is here.
The Texas Rangers begin their World Series defense Thursday night against the Chicago Cubs at Globe Life Field. While the Texas roster will look *mostly* like it did on Nov. 1, 2023, when the club clinched their first championship, there will be several notable changes in 2024.
Namely, rookie Wyatt Langford is here. Langford made the Opening Day roster and is expected to play outfield and designated hitter.
The Rangers also made a few additions (and subtractions) to their much-maligned bullpen, and added a new starting pitcher (not named Jordan Montgomery).
We're here to get you ready for the new season with previews on each position. Click the links below for the full preview:
The talent is all there but the 2024 Rangers rotation will rely on quite a bit of fortune and timing to get everyone in the right place and get the Rangers back to October with the cavalry in tow.
2023 Opening Day Rotation: Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi, Martin Perez, Jon Gray, Andrew Heaney
2024 Projected Opening Day Rotation: Nathan Eovaldi, Andrew Heaney, Jon Gray, Dane Dunning, Cody Bradford and/or Michael Lorenzen
The most expensive pitcher on the Rangers’ payroll won’t even figure into the equation until after June at the earliest, as Max Scherzer recuperates from offseason back surgery. The next most expensive pitcher, Jacob deGrom, is rehabbing the second Tommy John surgery of his career and isn’t due back until around August. Then there’s the team’s largest free agent expenditure from over the winter, Tyler Mahle, who is eyeing July as a potential return date from his own Tommy John surgery.
The Rangers have seen a near complete turnover from the rotation that they took into the second half and into the postseason and that includes the elephant in the room as it appears that October hero Jordan Montgomery’s free agency price tag was too rich for Texas, so he also won’t be on the staff when the first pitch gets thrown against the Chicago Cubs on Opening Day next Thursday.
For a team that won the World Series in spite of its relievers, addressing the bullpen, even at relatively low costs, was a key point of emphasis for the front office this winter in their pursuit of a repeat.
2023 Opening Day Bullpen: Dane Dunning, Taylor Hearn, Jonathan Hernández, Jose Leclerc, Brock Burke, Will Smith, Cole Ragans, Ian Kennedy
2024 Projected Opening Day Bullpen: Jose Leclerc, Brock Burke, Josh Sborz, David Robertson, Kirby Yates, Grant Anderson, Cody Bradford, Marc Church
Only two from the 2023 Opening Day relief corps are projected to return, as Jose Leclerc, who was the untouchable workhorse down the stretch and into the postseason, and Brock Burke, who had a down year after a sterling 2022 campaign, are penciled in. As for the rest?
Dane Dunning will be in the rotation and will likely remain there in 2024, though he does have experience now as a reliever. Taylor Hearn was demoted in April and then designated for assignment. He will pitch in Japan this year. Jonathan Hernandez has been dealing with injuries and had a very rough spring. The Rangers would love for him to bounce back and become a fireman relief arm like he was in 2022, but he won’t start the year with the big league club more than likely.
Will Smith had the closer job for much of the first half before cratering down the stretch. With Leclerc having a poor first half, the shakiness of the backend of the ‘pen necessitated the acquisition of Aroldis Chapman. That’s how the Rangers lost Ragans, who was traded to the Royals for the aforementioned Chapman and will be their 2024 Opening Day starter.
Heading into their days in Surprise, Texas already had a full Major League-quality depth chart, but there was someone else knocking at the door that proved inevitable.
That kid, Wyatt Langford, wasn’t even a part of the organization at this point last spring. But the talent of the fourth overall selection from last July’s MLB Draft matched the hype level and the reigning champion Rangers now appear to have too many outfielders for not enough positions. Truth be told, it’s not a terrible problem to have.
2023 Opening Day Outfielders – Adolis Garcia, Robbie Grossman, Bubba Thompson, Travis Jankowski
2024 Projected Opening Day Outfielders – Adolis Garcia, Leody Taveras, Evan Carter, Wyatt Langford, Travis Jankowski
If it seems strange to have five projected Opening Day outfielders, well, it is, at least a little bit. It could be even stranger. After all, there’s still Ezequiel Duran and even Josh Smith, both of whom can slide in somewhere in the outfield if needed.
If the 2024 version looks crowded, the Rangers’ outfield in 2023 was about 75% dangerous. Adolis Garcia was the cause for a lot of that danger as he built quite the legend for himself, not just with his extra base-erasing arm in right field, but for a second All-Star season and a postseason that will never be forgotten in North Texas.
It’s going to be hard for the 2024 Texas Rangers to top the productivity of the 2023 World Series winning catching tandem of Jonah Heim and Mitch Garver. That bountiful setup ended up being a principal reason for Texas ending their season as the last team standing.
Garver, while spending much of the season anchored as the designated hitter, ended up signing a two-year deal with the Seattle Mariners to greatly improve the lineup of an immediate rival.
But Heim had long usurped Garver as the primary catcher in Texas, and that has borne fruit even if the safety net of Garver is now in the Pacific Northwest.
2023 Opening Day Catchers: Jonah Heim, Mitch Garver
2024 Projected Opening Day Catchers: Jonah Heim, Andrew Knizner
After a strong 2022 season put him on the map, 2023 was something of a coming out party for Heim, as the then 28-year-old backstop received praise from all over for both sides of the ball.
Backing up Heim will likely be former St. Louis Cardinals catcher Andrew Knizner. Knizner, also going into his age-29 season, will be relied upon to spell Heim which means he’ll be counted on for defensive purposes and game calling first and foremost.
After much promise and many injury hiccups, Josh Jung debuted as part of the September roster expansion in 2022. 2023 was the year that he was expected to take hold of a big league job and help the team transition to become contenders. Call it mission accomplished.
2023 Opening Day Starting Third Baseman: Josh Jung
2024 Projected Opening Day Third Baseman: Josh Jung
Jung was supposed to start his big league career essentially a whole year earlier, but he was beset by a shoulder injury early in 2022. After getting his feet wet in the majors later that summer, Jung enjoyed a strong camp last spring to claim the third base job and he certainly wasted no time making an impression on not just the Rangers, but the rest of Major League Baseball.
There were some concerns about Jung’s MLB viability after he slashed just .204/.235/.418 in a 26-game cup of coffee at the tail end of the 2022 season. Jung, however, put those doubts to rest early as he looked more like the top prospect who shot through the system in just 153 career minor league games.
Slashing .270/.324/.500 over the first month of the season, and an unbelievable .318/.357/.561 in May, Jung entrenched himself in the middle of Bruce Bochy’s lineup and gave the Rangers a coveted solidified home grown talent to pair with purchased infielders Marcus Semien and Corey Seager. For his efforts, Jung earned the distinction of being the second Texas Ranger in history (along with Nomar Mazara) to earn back-to-back Rookie of the Month honors.
Corey Seager looked healthy in his return to spring training this past week, and that should bode well for the Rangers.
Because Corey Seager that carried the lineup last year – that’s the Corey Seager that the Rangers need for the entire season.
- 2023 Opening Day Starting Shortstop: Corey Seager
- 2024 Projected Opening Day Shortstop: Corey Seager
It’s not outside the realm of possibility to imagine that if Seager had stayed off the IL last year, and had added to the production that he put up when he was on the active roster, he would have given Shohei Ohtani a run for his money as American League MVP.
As it was, Seager suffered two stints out of action. Within the first month, Seager landed on the IL with a pulled hamstring. Red hot to start the season, Seager missed 31 games recovering from that injury before returning in late May and picking up right where he left off. Then in July, against his old team the Dodgers, Seager jammed his thumb sliding into second base, landing him on the IL again for the minimum 10 days. Again, when he came back, he picked up where he left off.
Seager’s decision in late January to have surgery on a sports hernia this close to the start of the season may have seemed like poor planning, but the injury dates back to late in the 2023 season and Texas simply played more than other teams on their way to winning the World Series which took until the first night of November, which meant that Seager had less time to recover and see if the injury would heal on its own.
The 2024 Texas Rangers will have their own Iron Man sitting at second base, and he's a key cog in the Arlington Machine as they look to repeat their World Series success.
Let's take a look at one half of the Rangers' half-a-billion-dollar middle infield.
2023 Opening Day Second Baseman: Marcus Semien
2024 Projected Opening Day Second Baseman: Marcus Semien
If you don’t count the truncated 2020 season, the two-time All-Star Semien has played in all but one game over the last four full seasons dating back to 2019.
In an era of full effort giving way to periods of rest, planned days off and IL stints for maintenance, Semien has been one of baseball’s unyielding mainstays.
For the Rangers last season, throughout a year in which they needed a leader to help them pull out of various inevitable tailspins, that consistency was treasured.
At times during 2023, Semien was playing at an MVP level, and indeed, he earned a top-3 spot in the AL MVP voting for the third time in the last five seasons.
During the month of May, when the Rangers were at their best, Semien was undoubtedly their most valuable player while remaining a daily fixture.
In a lineup that was short Corey Seager due to injury, Semien shouldered the productivity of his other keystone combo star, slashing .322/.385/.513 during the month with nine doubles, three homers and 21 RBI, all while playing Gold Glove caliber defense. Following a ridiculous 25-game hitting streak, Semien cooled off while Seager carried the load before lighting the torch for the Rangers down the stretch.
With a title to defend, one worry to begin April is the absence of Nathaniel Lowe, who won’t be at the bag to dig out the throws from his fellow infielders for at least a couple of weeks into the season as he nurses a strained oblique muscle injury that occurred early in camp.
2023 Opening Day First Baseman: Nathaniel Lowe
2024 Projected Opening Day First Baseman: Jared Walsh, Ezequiel Duran, or Justin Foscue
With Lowe out with an injury that can linger, the Rangers might turn to what would be a third rookie in their lineup if 2020 first-rounder Justin Foscue is selected to make the club. Foscue, who like Lowe attended Mississippi State, is Texas’ 5th ranked prospect after drawing 15 more walks (85) than strikeouts (70) as he ascended to Triple A in 2023.
A second baseman by trade, Foscue has been getting work all across the diamond during spring training where he produced a .261/.333/.413 slashline in Surprise.
The Rangers could also opt for a veteran in Lowe’s stead with Jared Walsh still in the mix. Walsh, an All-Star first baseman with the Los Angeles Angels in 2021, came to Rangers camp as a non-roster invitee and promptly hit .233/.365/.465 in 17 Cactus League games with three home runs.
Walsh, a left-handed hitter like Lowe, appears to be the more likely option with Texas potentially planning a platoon situation with Walsh and right-handed hitting utility infielder Ezequiel Duran. Duran, who can play anywhere, is primarily a middle infielder and was expected to potentially start for Corey Seager with the Rangers’ star shortstop also nursing an offseason injury that kept him out until the second to last game of the spring.