Texas Rangers rumors: Adrian Beltre and free agent predictions from Jon Heyman

Texas Rangers rumors: MLB free agent predictions from Jon Heyman are an offseason staple now, and Heyman has his latest column, with he and his expert predicting the contracts 131 different free agents will get, out today.

In an initial scan of the piece and using their predictions as the benchmark, I’d be on board with the Rangers bringing back Jake Diekman and Tony Barnette on a one year cheap deal, Drew Pomeranz for one year at $5-6 million, Lance Lynn at 2 years at $8-8.5M per year, and A.J. Pollock at 3 years, $14-15M per year. The numbers he puts for Machado look low to me, while I think he’s overestimating Dallas Keuchel’s market, but we shall see.

A couple of Rangers’ related items...he predicts Cole Hamels’ option gets exercised by the Cubs, which would save the Rangers $6 million in 2019 (which I don’t care about unless it gets re-invested in some form or fashion in the baseball side), and seems to think Robinson Chirinos would have a healthy market if the Rangers don’t exercise his team option. Matt Moore, sadly, doesn’t even make the list of 130+.

We do get an Adrian Beltre tease, however, with Heyman saying that Beltre would return if he likes what the Rangers do. Beltre’s agent is Scott Boras, of course, which means I’m going to put more weight on what Heyman says than if it were coming from another writer. It remains to be seen what Beltre wants to see in this regard, whether it is who the manager ends up being (though I do think Beltre is more likely to return with a new manager than he would have been otherwise) or seeing if the team is trying to put together a team that could contend.

The Adrian Beltre Watch is probably going to continue at least into the holidays, though, prepare yourself for a lengthy wait.