Texas Rangers, 22 players agree to one year deals

The Texas Rangers have agreed to one year contracts with all 22 of their players on the 40 man roster who were not already under contract. These are all players who are not yet arbitration-eligible, and who are all going to make around minimum salary for the time they are in the majors.

The minimum salary for MLB players in 2020 is $563,500. The Rangers, like most (if not all) MLB teams, have a scale they use for pre-arbitration players where players with no service time will earn $563,500 while they are in the majors in 2020, while those players who have accrued some service time prior to 2020 have salaries that are somewhat higher, based on a sliding scale pegged to service time accrued.

The salaries agreed to are usually not substantially more than minimum salary — as a point of reference, Kyle Bird, who had no service time at the start of 2019, was at $555,000, the minimum salary in 2019, for his 2019 contract. Joey Gallo, meanwhile, who was a little over two and a half years in service time, was at $605,500 for 2019.

Players have no real bargaining power in pre-arbitration contracts, as a team can simply re-new the contract of a pre-arbitration player if the player doesn’t agree to the contract. That said, you’d prefer to have guys agree to deals instead of getting mad, refusing to sign and being renewed, so hey, this is something good.