ARLINGTON, Texas — The Texas Rangers come into the 2024 season with the potential for one of the most intriguing starting rotations in baseball, but it’s also one that seems to have been put together using a bit of smoke and mirrors despite many of the same hurlers returning from last season’s World Series run.
This is the modern age of baseball. No team expects to get through 162 games with only five starters anymore. With starting pitching, expect hiccups. The depth will be tested. There will be injuries, especially from this group with a history of them. But this is true for all teams and you can look no further than the 2023 Rangers as an example as they overhauled their staff at the trade deadline on their way to a championship.
It worked last year but there is the thought that perhaps the Rangers have gone to an extreme with a similar plan with more than half of their best starting pitcher arms not expected back until mid-season at the earliest.
This is the dice roll that Texas has opted for in their title defense year. The talent is all there but the gambit will rely on quite a bit of fortune and timing to get everyone in the right place and get the Rangers back to October with the cavalry in tow.
2023 Opening Day Rotation: Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi, Martin Perez, Jon Gray, Andrew Heaney
2024 Projected Opening Day Rotation: Nathan Eovaldi, Andrew Heaney, Jon Gray, Dane Dunning, Cody Bradford and/or Michael Lorenzen
The most expensive pitcher on the Rangers’ payroll won’t even figure into the equation until after June at the earliest, as Max Scherzer recuperates from offseason back surgery. The next most expensive pitcher, Jacob deGrom, is rehabbing the second Tommy John surgery of his career and isn’t due back until around August. Then there’s the team’s largest free agent expenditure from over the winter, Tyler Mahle, who is eyeing July as a potential return date from his own Tommy John surgery.
The Rangers have seen a near complete turnover from the rotation that they took into the second half and into the postseason and that includes the elephant in the room as it appears that October hero Jordan Montgomery’s free agency price tag was too rich for Texas, so he also won’t be on the staff when the first pitch gets thrown against the Chicago Cubs on Opening Day next Thursday.
As the Rangers wind down their time in Surprise, AZ, trying to reintegrate Jon Gray, Dane Dunning, and Andrew Heaney back into the rotation, many wondered why the team wouldn’t just pony up and re-sign Montgomery to solve much of their innings deficit. Montgomery, down the stretch, was exactly what the Rangers envisioned when they acquired him at the trade deadline from St. Louis, but it was his performance in the postseason that had Rangers’ fans envisioning him as the next long-term staff fixture.
In particular, Montgomery’s performance in the ALCS against the Astros, shouldering 2.1 scoreless innings in a pennant-clinching Game 7 and allowing just two runs total in 14 ⅓ innings in that series, was the stuff that will have a section dedicated in the World Series documentaries. But a reunion has proven to be too pricey for a team that committed half-a-billion dollars to their middle infield two years ago and picked up another quarter-million in rotation pieces last year.
The late spring addition was not Montgomery, but was instead 2023 All-Star right-hander Michael Lorenzen. Lorenzen (9-9, 4.18 ERA), who represented Detroit in the All-Star game before pitching a no-hitter for Philadelphia following a trade last summer, certainly isn’t Montgomery, but he does help to solve the Rangers’ biggest problem since last season, which is depth of pitching in general.
Last season, Texas solved that problem by acquiring Scherzer and Montgomery, which enabled them to slide Heaney and Perez to the bullpen. To start the season, Heaney and Gray (who was moved to the bullpen for the postseason) will be back in the rotation. So too will Dane Dunning, who started 2023 in the bullpen, stepped in for deGrom at the end of April, and ended up back in the bullpen in October.
With deGrom, Scherzer and Mahle out recovering from various surgeries, the Texas starting depth was looking fairly thin, especially with the lack of development from the arms on the farm. Montgomery would have fit the bill nicely, but so does Lorenzen and he comes at a much lower cost.
Lorenzen, a reliever-turned-starter, also provides flexibility in usage. It also doesn’t hurt that the $4.5 million that he signed for is a literal fraction of the price that Montgomery would have commanded and is only for one year. Lorenzen could be a starter at the beginning of the season, and indeed he likely was offered a spot in the rotation to sign. But he could also be a multi-inning reliever, something that Heaney and Gray showed that they can benefit from having behind them.
Lorenzen has been used in high-leverage relief situations as well as long-relief scenarios. When the trio of deGrom, Scherzer, and Mahle come off the IL at various points during the summer, Lorenzen could slot in the rotation behind them or work in tandem with them as they ramp back up to longer outings.
Once the reinforcements arrive, the once thin pitching depth that the Rangers come into the season with would suddenly offer a lot of different scenarios, which is something Texas used to their advantage last October and it earned them the franchise’s first championship.
As it is, the one mainstay holdover to begin the season is the man who won the World Series clincher, Nathan Eovaldi. Eovaldi, who was arguably the team’s most valuable pitcher during the 2023 season (and certainly in the postseason), will get the nod against the Cubs on Opening Day. It is an honor bestowed on the Texan after a 12-5 season, where he put up a 3.63 ERA, but also an undefeated postseason streak, going 5-0 with a 2.93 ERA.
The 34-year old will be making his 4th career Opening Day start and clearly goes into the 2024 season wearing the label of team ace, a title he gained after deGrom went down early in 2023.
Perhaps the team’s No. 2 starter in the first half will be Dunning, who manager Bruce Bochy called the team’s most valuable pitcher in 2023. After stepping in for deGrom, Dunning, citing a new stance and positioning on the mound, was able to parlay that into being one of the team’s most consistent starters, going 10-7 in the role with a 3.55 era. He also contributed three scoreless appearances in the World Series out of the ‘pen.
This rotation doesn’t have to be perfect for the Rangers to achieve the greatness that they experienced last season. In fact, embracing their imperfections and letting the lineup shoulder the load should be expected. With the offense able to put up multiple-run innings at a moment’s notice, this patchwork rotation should be able to pitch under relatively low pressure. There’s also a Gold Glove-studded defense behind the staff to help them through the bumps and bruises.
And when deGrom, Scherzer, and Mahle do make it back? That’s a fun problem to analyze then, but with four of the five pitchers starting the season as rotation members having finished the 2023 season in a relief setting, the Rangers have positioned themselves to win the sprint at the end again, even if the marathon appears daunting.
Reinforcements should be on the way – if Texas can keep things together until they do, we could be in for another extended season of baseball.
Do you think the Rangers will make do with their first-half rotation? Share your thoughts with Matt on Twitter @FisherWritesMLB.
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