2023 Rangers arbitration projections and payroll numbers

With the 2022 regular season now over, MLB Trade Rumors has released their projected arbitration salaries for 2023 for arbitration-eligible players. These projections are based on a model created by Matt Swartz, and MLBTR has been running these projections for over a decade now.

The Rangers have six players who we know are arbitration-eligible currently. Those players, along with their MLBTR projected salaries, are:

Nathaniel Lowe — $4.3M

Mitch Garver — $4.2M

Taylor Hearn — $1.7M

Brett Martin — $1.5M

Dennis Santana — $1.1M

Jonathan Hernandez — $1M

Lowe does not quite have three years of service time yet, but he is Super Two eligible. Brock Burke is the other Ranger who would appear to be possibly eligible as a Super Two, but if that’s been determined one way or the other yet, I haven’t seen it.

Garver, Martin and Santana are the guys who may not end up being here after the non-tender deadline. Santana’s disastrous second half would appear to put his 40 man roster spot in jeopardy, and he could be on the waiver wire at the end of the month. Garver and Martin both have salaries that seem reasonable, but Texas may look to move or non-tender one or both of them, Garver because of his injury, Martin because of the other lefty relief options Texas has.

Texas currently has four players under contract for 2023:

Corey Seager — $35M

Marcus Semien — $26M

Jon Gray — $15M

Brad Miller — $4M

In addition, the club has a $6M option on Jose Leclerc for 2023, with a $750K buyout, and a $5.2M option on Kole Calhoun for 2023 with no buyout.

The Rangers are out from under the Rougned Odor contract, which they paid $12.3M towards in 2022, and the Elvis Andrus contract, which they paid $7.25M towards in 2022.

If we assume that the Rangers keep all their arbitration-eligible players except for Santana, the team will have $93.45M in payroll allocated to nine players (if they decline the Leclerc option), or $98.7M in payroll allocated to ten players (if they pick up the Leclerc option).

Either way, and even including $10 million or so for the various minimum salary guys who will be on the major league payroll, there’s plenty of money for the Rangers to spend this offseason.