The Rangers overcame the first hurdle of their offseason when they signed manager Jeff Banister earlier this week. Speaking of hurdles (and bad puns), the erstwhile Pirates bench coach is drawing frequent comparisons to recent colleague Clint Hurdle. Shortstop Elvis Andrus sees a similar passion for the game, reports Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News. Another Rangers insider speaking with Bill Madden of the New York Daily News said, ““(The Rangers) have long had a love crush on Hurdle…and, in Banister, they felt like they were getting the closest thing to him.”
- We learned earlier today that the Rangers have expressed interest in re-signing right-handed pitcher Colby Lewis. In a separate article for the Dallas Morning News, Fraley writes that the next step for the Rangers is to re-open communications with Lewis’ agent Alan Nero. Said Daniels, “We haven’t been able to spend much time on that. We can get back to that now.”
- The Astros are thought to raise payroll by as much as $20MM next season and starting pitching could be a target, writes Chris Perry of The Crawfish Boxes. Perry focuses his attention on the shape of the market rather than picking a specific target. The top end of the free agent market – Max Scherzer, Jon Lester, and James Shields – aren’t good fits, but anyone below the first tier could be in play. My own opinion: innings eaters like Kyle Kendrick, Roberto Hernandez, and Kevin Correia could make sense. Keep in mind, the Astros department of decision sciences identified Collin McHugh prior to the season, so they could have other stealthy names in mind.
Department of decision sciences? Sounds like just the job for a Reverend Murph.
Seems like every team in baseball is interested in the “second tier starters.” Much more of this, and they won’t be second tier anymore.
Correia is what, a 10th tier starter?
Rangers really need some quality pitching next year and the best pitchers on the market is Lester Scherzer and shields we will see what happens from there then go after a hitter or two in the lineup like vmart and markaisias
The Rangers would be better off going after a few mid-tier starters over the likes of Lester and company since we have our top two starters already established (Darvish and Holland respectively) and more would be not only be expensive and take up more salary space that the Rangers don’t really have, but unnecessary once Perez gets back (hopefully in the middle of the year). Also, Nick Markakis would be kind of pointless in the lineup with the belief that Choo is going to take over the easier to defend right field.