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 made their first relatively big signing of the offseason on Monday, agreeing to a two-year deal with catcher Kyle Higashioka to share time with Jonah Heim behind the plate.

What does the Higashioka signing mean, both for Jonah Heim and for the Rangers’ offseason heading into the annual Winter Meetings next week?

“Specific to Kyle, again, he was a target for us,” general manager Ross Fenstermaker emphasized. “You can never quite predict the order of operations on how things play out. You have to let the market dictate where you go with that. But we knew going into the offseason that we wanted to add Kyle. We had spent a lot of time doing background work on him leading into free agency, and to be able to do that early-ish in the offseason as one of our first moves kind of set us up as a domino effect for other things that we think we can accomplish.”

As it pertains to Heim, it appears Higashioka was brought on to share time with him, more so than being a pure backup. Heim has been the Rangers' starter for the past two seasons, but followed up his All-Star and NL Gold Glove Award-winning 2023 with a ‘24 that ended with a 70 wRC+ and a severe decline in defensive metrics across the board.

Despite Heim's struggles, Texas spent all season crediting him for his handling of the pitching staff, while trying to get him off his feet whenever possible. He’s spent the offseason working out at Globe Life Field, attempting to get his body right and return to his 2023 form.

“He’s doing great,” Fenstermaker said. “He battled through a few things last year, and I think he's in a really good spot, health-wise, and he's doing really well overall. He feels really good with where his body's at and where his training is going at this point. I think he's in a great spot. We have a lot of confidence that he's going to bounce back and be an All-Star-type catcher for us.

“We're looking forward to complementing him with somebody like Kyle, who I think will help elevate and create one of the better catching tandems in the game.”

As for the Rangers' plans moving forward this winter, having an established catching duo this early in the offseason allows the front office to pivot its attention to more important matters, namely the pitching staff. The hope is that two quality defensive catchers will at the very least attract the kind of pitching talent Texas desires going into 2025.

The Rangers are in need of multiple arms in the bullpen and the rotation. While they do have more minor holes to fill on the position-player side, finding pitchers will continue to be the main priority moving forward.

“In some ways, we think Kyle is the start of that process with his abilities,” Fenstermaker explained. “Him and Jonah, the way that they complement one another, their commitment to the game planning, game calling and commitment to their pitchers, I think, is going to be maybe an immeasurable lift to our pitching staff overall, while we continue to round out who that is going into the Meetings here in Dallas.”