The Rangers are “strongly pursuing” late-inning reliever Kelvin Herrera of the Royals, Bob Nightengale of USA Today Sports tweets.
The Rangers have already been connected to a couple of different potential trade candidates in the past few days, and it’s no secret that their bullpen could use some fortification. Their 2017 relievers as a group ranked among the worst in baseball in a number of key categories (five separate links), and they’re hoping to contend in 2018.
As for the Royals, recent indications are they are willing to sell off major league assets to rebuild their prospect base and shave payroll. Herrera would be an obvious trade candidate should they choose to go that route. The soon-to-be 28-year-old reliever is under team control for just one more season, and projects to make $8.3MM in his final trip through arbitration.
Herrera was one-third of a terrifying bullpen trio for Kansas City during their memorable 2014 and 2015 seasons. For most of that time, he served as the seventh-inning setup option behind Wade Davis and Greg Holland. Herrera was bumped up to the eighth inning when Holland got injured near the end of 2015, and became the Royals’ closer following the pre-2017 trade of Wade Davis to the Cubs. He struggled with the long ball in 2017 en route to a career-worst 4.25 ERA, but given his stellar track record, there’s reason to believe he could bounce back and provide the Rangers with some stability at the back end of their bullpen.
Why are they strongly pursuing him at 3 AM?
the late hours are the best time to find late relievers
Hard work my friend. Lol .
Because off season meetings/gatherings are 24 hour a day ordeals.
Bars close at 2am…it’s “relief goggles” hour in the elevator.
Why him instead of Rondon? Surely Rondon won’t cost more than 8.3 mm per year and has been just as effective as Herrera.
So effective that Maddon barely used him pressure situations in the playoffs. Interesting take
Well given the fact that Maddon is super overrated and made several poor decisions in the 2017 Postseason, it doesn’t mean Rondon sucks.
Well…. It could be, Maybe his 6+ era had something to do with unless it was Maddon’s fault Rondon couldn’t get outs
Martin does have a bit of a Casey Stengel, “Celebrity Manager” vibe. The guy you get when your team is on top…the cherry I guess.
You’re rehashing old, defunct, unrelated arguments. Crawl back into your salty hole.
Daniels has a fondness for damaged bargain pitchers that come out of ST on the DL. He is in on most everyone available but can’t pull the trigger on the big ones due to salary constraints. Where is the $20 Million they were prepared to give Ohtani’s team for the right to sign him?
Daniels already promised it to Shin Soo Choo in 2020… four years ago. Thank God for that splashy move.
The last letter in his first name needs to be changed to a T. Big gigantic waste of money.
I don’t get this at all. If the Rangers are tight on cash why blow $8M on this guy?
If the Royals can deal Herrera for decent prospects get it done. Totals will line up for a few years of top end picks given these comp picks coming and by virtue of the lousy record.
Jon Daniels seat is about to get warm. Houston is a juggernaut while Arlington is old and underperforming.
If you actually followed the rangers you would realize this is a dumb comment
Again another Western Division team needing a bullpen arm, what’s wrong with David Hernandez? He had a 2.21 ERA with Angels before being traded to the Dbacks. He pretty much shoved against Western Division teams!