DEC. 15: Barnette’s contract guarantees him $3.5MM over the next two years, reports Wilson (links to Twitter). Barnette will earn $1.5MM in 2016 and $1.75MM in 2017. His club option is valued at $4MM and comes with a $250K buyout, but the option’s value could escalate based on games finished, per Wilson. The Rangers also formally announced the signing today.
DEC. 10, 10:30am: Barnette’s deal also contains a club option for 2018, tweets Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
9:17am: The Rangers and right-handed reliever Tony Barnette are in agreement on a two-year contract, reports Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. Barnette, 32, is a former D-backs farmhand that never broke into the Majors before heading over to Japan and establishing himself as a dominant closer. He is represented by the Wasserman Media Group.
The Rangers will owe a $500K posting fee to Nippon Professional Baseball’s Yakult Swallows as compensation for losing Barnette, which will be in addition to the value of the contract actually issued by Texas. Barnette has a career 3.58 ERA with the Swallows in Japan but is coming off a season in which he posted a pristine 1.29 ERA with 8.0 K/9 against 2.7 BB/9 in 62 2/3 innings of work.
Good sign by that rangers
Well I would agree, good sign. Just making that bullpen even stronger.
This is crazy, 2 years on a guy who’s had basically 2 good seasons (out of 6) as a closer in Japan?
Probably paid him nothing. Obviously the scouts liked him. I trust our Asian scouts. They brought us Yu.
Darvish was about as close to a ‘can’t miss’ as a guy who had pitched exclusively in Japan could be though. I don’t think there was anyone in the league who thought he’d absolutely flame out and be awful. Barnette on the other hand, is far less of a sure thing.
Teams weren’t that crazy about Yu or he wouldn’t be pitching in Texas. The Dodgers, Yankees or one of the mega bank rolls would have thrown down the cash for him.
The Rangers paid over $50 million to win the rights to negotiate with Darvish. That was a record setting amount for the posting system and is a LOT of money to shell out all at once, even for teams like the Yankees and Dodgers, but there were a lot of teams interested in him.
It wasn’t a record setting number for Yu. The red Sox paid more to speak with dice k.
This is a 3.5 million dollar contract, what risk is there? This a relief pitcher if he doesn’t pan out oh well.
Actually it IS record setting and it won’t be broken since the rules have since changed. Dice-K cost $51.1MM, Yu cost $51.6MM in posting fee alone not to mention Darvish signed for $8MM more on his actual contract.
Hardly crazy. Maybe this guy needed a chance of scenery to find himself. Texas did that with Colby Lewis and the results were good. You can never have enough good arms in the bullpen. JD did a great job rebuilding the pen last year on the fly—–but who knows how well those guys will do this year? Or injuries? Good pickup.
Agreed, few million $ gamble which could have been spent on someone who has at least shown they can get major league hitters out.
Ok JD the bullpen is deep. Lots of arms down there. How about a bat! Doesn’t need to be Ruth or Aaron. Just a righty that can balance the lineup against lefties would be great. Napoli, Pearce, Gomes. Would be nice to have a defensive minded bench piece that can play centerfield too. Deshields is only guy on the roster that can currently play center. Hamilton is way too brittle to be out there.
This only means that now they can trade an arm from in the bullpen for a bat. Good move.
I agree, I think this I could be setting up another moving coming up! We need a SP,LF, or, a backup CF help set the lineup!!!
Eh
I like how J.D. makes these sneaky moves that turn out to have huge success more often than not.Like Deshields last year coming from rule 5 that was a super sneaky move on his part that turned out well and in our favor.This is a move reminiscent of that one me thinks.
I think that JD should bring in 1 more big contract, A right handed bat like Justin Upton for left field. I think he should resign Nap for 1st base and abandon that Nap in LF experiment.. I don’t trust Hambone to be the primary LFder. I could see Hambone at 1st to platoon with Nap and possibly move Moreland in a package’for a 4 or 5 starter. When Hambone gets some plate discipline, then he could spell all OF positions as well as platoon 1st base to get his at bats.