Rangers one season improvement

[Hubs]

For those of you who want to rebuild or wait, here was the Texas 2022 roster in 2022 when they won 68 games under Woodward and their interim manager Tony Beasley.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/TEX/2022.shtml 

Then the 2023 team

https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/TEX/2023.shtml

What were the big offensive differences? They scored 174 more runs in 2023.

Better coaching for one, and a few nice additions. Seager had a much better year in 2023. Josh Jung took over the third base spot. Nathaniel Lowe actually had a much worse OPS+.  Garver had a much healthier year and really delivered. Adolis Garcia improved. 

Pitching wise they gave up 27 fewer runs, and two of their big pitching additions didn't really work out, with DeGrom getting hurt and Scherzer following suit after the midseason acquisition. Eovaldi was a major add, even though he only managed 25 starts, as was Montgomery for the stretch run. Dunning was essentially the same and Perez took a huge step backwards.

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The Angels can make similar moves to what Texas did last offseason (and they have started by signing a veteran manager), and make a similar improvement. Obviously bringing back Ohtani is the number one priority. If they manage to bring him back, better health from everyone from Trout to Neto to Rendon should improve. Stassi being there should help the pitching staff. I'd imagine Drury helps. So they just need a few key additions, mainly on the pitching side.

1) They need another infielder to help for depth, mostly.

2) They need another outfielder to help for depth, mostly. Preferably one with minor league options, but..

3) They need to replace Ohtani's innings as a starter for 2024. They need another starter on top of this. Snell would be nice addition, but I'd be okay with Montgomery and Lugo as well. Trading one of their existing starters may help acquire the other spots.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Hubs

[tdawg87]

It basically will take everyone on the current roster improving significantly, and more importantly, staying healthy. 

They need to add to the roster for sure but as Fletcher has said many times, the biggest improvements come from within.

 

[totdprods]

20 minutes ago, Hubs said:

1) They need another infielder to help for depth, mostly.

2) They need another outfielder to help for depth, mostly. Preferably one with minor league options, but..

3) They need to replace Ohtani's innings as a starter for 2024. They need another starter on top of this. Snell would be nice addition, but I'd be okay with Montgomery and Lugo as well. Trading one of their existing starters may help acquire the other spots.

I haven't been able to put it quite into one plan I like yet, but I see sort of a great opening for a 'leapfrog' type approach. 
Estevez and Drury are both useful contributors to a 2024 club, but are likely gone for a 2025 club. Trade them now to rebuild some of the prospect capital lost in '23, but sign almost identical replacements for both so we have that production also locked in for '25. Such as a Jeimer Candelario and a Nick Maton. 

Aside from that, I'm hoping for something similar to last offseason, and hope that Minasian has convinced Arte that distributing the money across multiple mid-tier players is a better strategy than big spending.  
Sign Eduardo Rodriguez 4/$90m
Sign Marcus Stroman 2/$44m
Sign Jordan Hicks 3/$30m
Sign Jeimer Candelario 3/$45m

~$70m added to the year's payroll which is a lot, but Ohtani, Renfroe, and Urshela dropping were $50m, so not a massive stretch of the imagination, puts us around where we were EOY in '23 I think before the waiver storm.
Creative contract structure or trading some arb. players could help crack open a few mil more for bullpen depth.

Rotation:  Rodriguez, Stroman, Sandoval, Detmers, Canning, Anderson
Bullpen: Hicks, Estevez, Kolarek, Soriano, Joyce, Bachman, Silseth, Suarez, who else ?!?!??!
Line-up: O'Hoppe, Schanuel, Drury, Neto, Candelario, Ward, Trout, Adell/Moniak, Rendon DH, Rengifo super-sub, Thaiss CIF/C, Stassi C, Fletcher IF

Wouldn't say it's a great team, but it's a solid team.

Edited November 30, 2023 by totdprods

[Hubs]

3 minutes ago, tdawg87 said:

It basically will take everyone on the current roster improving significantly, and more importantly, staying healthy. 

They need to add to the roster for sure but as Fletcher has said many times, the biggest improvements come from within.

 

The Rangers did do this, with Garver, Garcia and Jung, plus Seager returning to form.

The Angels equivalent would be in different positions of course but wouldn’t this be like Rendon doing what Garver did, Moniak / Adell / or Ward doing what Garcia did and Schanuel or Neto taking over their respective positions like Jung did.

Pitching wise they got a lot from eovaldi and Heaney and that’s what the Angels need to look to add.

[Tank]

i think the most important addition the halos can make for this coming season is to have a healthy team. 

they certainly need to assess the talent and improve where they can, but players that are healthy and productive are going to count for almost more than anything else.

if trout or rendon miss 40+ games again because of injuries, the team is sunk. 

[totdprods]

8 minutes ago, Tank said:

i think the most important addition the halos can make for this coming season is to have a healthy team. 

they certainly need to assess the talent and improve where they can, but players that are healthy and productive are going to count for almost more than anything else.

if trout or rendon miss 40+ games again because of injuries, the team is sunk. 

Injuries really fucked the 2023 team. IMO they very likely could have made the wild card otherwise. There was a point in August where we had basically an entire team on the IL…

Two catchers in Stassi and O’Hoppe, an entire infield in Drury, Neto, Rendon, and Urshela (eventually Rengifo), an outfield in Ward, Trout and Adell. 

A rotation’s worth in Canning, Suarez, Bachman, Daniel, CRod, and a bullpen in Joyce, Warren, Quijada, Devenski. 

And yes, there was a point where they basically all overlapped. An entire team. 

 

[Pancake Bear]

If we had a healthy Trout and Rendon playing at least somewhat close to what they did when last healthy (Rendon 2020, Trout pre-injury 2022), that would go a long way towards making the lineup elite, even without any significant additions. I'm not expecting that, but if it happened, it would be huge. The reality is we never really had a healthy Trout and Ohtani performing at a high level at the same time for very long. It was always either one or the other. 

[Swordsman78]

2 hours ago, totdprods said:

Injuries really fucked the 2023 team. IMO they very likely could have made the wild card otherwise. There was a point in August where we had basically an entire team on the IL…

Two catchers in Stassi and O’Hoppe, an entire infield in Drury, Neto, Rendon, and Urshela (eventually Rengifo), an outfield in Ward, Trout and Adell. 

A rotation’s worth in Canning, Suarez, Bachman, Daniel, CRod, and a bullpen in Joyce, Warren, Quijada, Devenski. 

And yes, there was a point where they basically all overlapped. An entire team. 

 

Exactly.  The bottom line is the Rangers got lucky and the Angels didn't

[Angels 1961]

2 hours ago, tdawg87 said:

It basically will take everyone on the current roster improving significantly, and more importantly, staying healthy. 

They need to add to the roster for sure but as Fletcher has said many times, the biggest improvements come from within.

 

I'm working on my within

[tdawg87]

Gross.

[Blarg]

4 hours ago, Swordsman78 said:

Exactly.  The bottom line is the Rangers got lucky Bochy and the Angels didn't

FIFY 

[Turd Ferguson]

21 hours ago, totdprods said:

Injuries really fucked the 2023 team. IMO they very likely could have made the wild card otherwise. There was a point in August where we had basically an entire team on the IL…

Two catchers in Stassi and O’Hoppe, an entire infield in Drury, Neto, Rendon, and Urshela (eventually Rengifo), an outfield in Ward, Trout and Adell. 

A rotation’s worth in Canning, Suarez, Bachman, Daniel, CRod, and a bullpen in Joyce, Warren, Quijada, Devenski. 

And yes, there was a point where they basically all overlapped. An entire team. 

 

Don't necessarily disagree, but how is this different than any other season? Seems like we are crushed by injuries every season. Is it a training room thing? Player thing? Pure bad luck? That's what I think we need to get to the bottom of.

[Docwaukee]

Injuries were critical.  But the Angels had depth and even went out and traded for more depth.  The depth helped tremendously in the first half but it didn't work in the second  half mostly because pretty much every piece Perry acquired near the deadline was anywhere from just bad to an unmitigated disaster.  

Just to give a little specific flavor to this - Mike Stefanic had the 4th highest WAR for position players from Aug 1st on with 0.3 in 46 plate appearances.  David Fletcher was 5th with 0.1. 

There were 15 players that had negative WAR during that time.