SBN Sim Offseason — Texas Rangers review

In what has become an annual tradition, Max Rieper with Royals Review ran a simulated offseason the past couple of days. Your intrepid blogger helmed the Texas Rangers, with an eye towards trying meet the real life Rangers’ goal of contending for a playoff spot in 2023 without going too crazy.

Here are the Sim Rangers’ moves:

Rangers offer QO to Martin Perez. Perez declines. Rangers sign Perez to three year, $45 million deal.

Rangers exercise option on Jose LeClerc, decline option on Kole Calhoun.

Rangers trade Grant Anderson to the Diamondbacks for Mark Melancon and $4 million.

Rangers trade Brad Miller, Josh Sborz, and Jayce Easley to the Nationals for Logan Verrett.

Rangers trade Kolby Allard to the Braves for Jake Odorizzi and $10 million

Rangers trade Cody Bradford and Jonathan Ornelas to Twins for Sonny Gray

Rangers sign Hanser Alberto to a minor league deal

Rangers trade Jesus Tinoco to the Mets for Darin Ruf

Rangers trade Trey Hair to the Cubs for Yan Gomes

Rangers trade Marc Church and Larson Kindreich to the Blue Jays for Teoscar Hernandez

Rangers trade Justin Foscue to the Tigers for Austin Meadows, Eduardo Rodriguez, and $8M in 2025 and 2026 (if Rodriguez doesn’t exercise his opt out after 2023)

Rangers sign Elvis Andrus to a 1 year, $1 million deal

The Braves and I decided to go ahead and do the Allard/Odorizzi deal because, what the hell, the teams did it, might as well.

The Nationals were willing to take Miller and his $4M in 2023 off my hands if they could have Sborz and Easley, which was fine with me.

Melancon, Ruf and Gomes were salary dumps by their respective teams. I got Gomes when I wasn’t sure if I would have a viable DH, and thought maybe I was going to use Mitch Garver as the primary DH. Once I ended up with both Meadows and Teoscar, I looked to deal Garver or Gomes, and had discussions with the Astros on a Garver for Hector Neris swap. Time ran out before I could get something figured out with someone, but assume either Garver or Gomes gets dealt in spring training to a team that needs a catcher — they wouldn’t both be on the roster.

Gray and Teoscar are both one year rentals, but both fill needs and did not cost a lot to acquire.

I made the Meadows/E-Rod trade after I had acquired Ruf and Teoscar, and I probably wouldn’t have acquired both Ruf and Teoscar if I had gotten Meadows first.

With Rodriguez, he’s either one year, $14M, or four years, $47M, depending on whether he opts out or not. He was bad in 2022 but I was comfortable taking him on at that price as part of this deal.

With Meadows and Teoscar, one can DH and the other can play a COF spot, with Garcia in the other COF spot and Leody in CF. I have insurance, though, in case Leody flops, since I can move Garcia to CF, Teoscar and Meadows to the corner spots, and rotate folks at DH.

Ruf is a RH bench bat. He’s hit lefties well in the past. If he is bad, well, I release him, because he’s cheap.

I signed Elvis because he was still out there and because I Heart Elvis.

The full sim with all moves are available in the comments here.