Can Rangers fill out bullpen before Spring Training?
This story was excerpted from Kennedi Landry's Rangers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
ARLINGTON -- The Rangers had one of the splashier Winter Meetings earlier this month in Dallas, including re-signing Nathan Eovaldi and trading for Jake Burger. Additionally, they started rebuilding the bullpen with the signing of right-hander Jacob Webb.
Now, the biggest question Texas has to answer heading into Spring Training remains how the club will fill out its bullpen. President of baseball operations Chris Young didn’t hide it: Experienced bullpen arms will continue to be the Rangers' focus going forward this offseason.
“It has to be,” Young said. “There are so many uncertainties that we need to continue to look for the right bullpen arms to build a winning team.”
Getting Eovaldi back was the No. 1 plan this offseason. But the need in the bullpen is obvious.
Texas lost four relievers -- righties Kirby Yates (61 2/3 innings), David Robertson (72 innings) and José Leclerc (66 2/3 innings); lefty Andrew Chafin (19 1/3 innings) -- and swingman righty José Ureña (109 innings) to free agency this winter.
Additionally, right-hander Josh Sborz will miss at least the first two months of the 2025 season after right shoulder surgery in November following an injury-riddled 2024 season during which he threw just 16 1/3 innings. Sborz tossed a career-high 64 1/3 innings in '23 -- including the postseason, during which he was maybe the club’s most reliable reliever, tossing 12 innings with a 0.75 ERA en route to a seven-out save in Game 5 of the World Series.
All those things combined leave the Rangers with very few reliable, experienced relief arms. Webb is just the starting point, and he might already be the most stable reliever in Texas’ bullpen before he even steps foot in the state.
“We’re just looking to make our bullpen better,” Young said. “We are looking to improve our bullpen in a number of ways: middle relief, leverage, lefties, righties. We have holes, and we're going to continue to address those holes. We had a number of great conversations with agents and with teams [at the Winter Meetings]. We will continue to find the right pieces.”
In addition to Webb, the Rangers’ bullpen depth consists of Dane Dunning, Walter Pennington, Grant Anderson and Gerson Garabito. A guy like Jack Leiter (Texas’ No. 4 prospect, according to MLB Pipeline) could be used as a swingman to also provide rotation depth, but it’s clear the club needs tons of help to fill in the gaps.
As with every position, Young emphasized that the Rangers are exploring every way to improve the bullpen, whether in free agency or through trades.
“I've said it before, but it may not be a complete bullpen [on] April 1,” Young said. “It will be an evolution throughout the season. Some of that will be our player development, providing good arms over the course of the year. Some of it will be external additions. But we feel good about what we're going to be able to do. We feel good about the moves we've made thus far in the offseason, but there's a lot of work left to be done.”