Rangers right-hander Jon Gray is done for the season due to a foot injury. Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News was among those to relay the news on X from manager Bruce Bochy. Gray is not yet on the injured list but will presumably be placed there shortly. Righty Tyler Mahle is also “pretty much shut down,” according to Bochy, per Kennedi Landry of MLB.com on X.
The Rangers are out of contention at this point, so there’s little reason for any individual player to push through an injury. They are 65-73 and 9.5 games back of a playoff spot with just a few weeks left to play. At this point, there’s nothing to suggest Gray’s foot issue will impact his 2025 campaign, but it seems he will sit out what’s left of the 2024 season. Mahle has already been on the IL for about two weeks due to shoulder stiffness, but it appears he may not have enough time to ramp back up before the schedule is done.
That doesn’t matter much in the short term because, as mentioned, the club is effectively done in the context of the current campaign. But taken in aggregate, the club may have some concerns with next year’s rotation. Both Max Scherzer and Andrew Heaney are slated for free agency this winter. Nathan Eovaldi is likely to be joining them. He needs to pitch 16 more innings this year to unlock a $20MM player option for 2025. But even if he does open up that player option, it would be logical for him to turn it down and head to the open market in search of a lengthier deal with a larger guarantee.
The core of next year’s rotation, on paper, consists of Gray, Mahle and Jacob deGrom. Gray has only thrown 102 2/3 innings this year as he made two separate stints to the IL due to a right groin strain. Now this foot injury will prevent him from adding to that total. Both Mahle and deGrom underwent Tommy John surgery last summer and have been working back to health this year. Mahle made three starts, logging 12 2/3 innings, before heading back to the IL with the aforementioned shoulder soreness. deGrom hasn’t yet pitched at the big league level but is currently on a rehab assignment and could be back in the majors before the season is out.
That leaves the club going into 2025 with a rotation nucleus consisting of three guys who will be coming off incomplete seasons due to injuries. Cody Bradford, Dane Dunning and Jack Leiter figure to be in the mix for jobs, but Bradford and Dunning also missed time due to injury this year. With Bradford, a low back strain limited him to 56 innings in the majors. Dunning made two separate trips to the IL due to shoulder problems and logged 90 1/3 innings. He’s currently on optional assignment. Leiter still has just five big league outings under his belt and an ERA of 11.78 in those.
Kumar Rocker is looking good in the minors but is also coming back from a 2023 Tommy John surgery, like deGrom and Mahle. His numbers have been great this year, a 1.71 ERA, but in just 31 2/3 innings. He’s at the Triple-A level now and is technically close to major league readiness, but it’s unclear how much the Rangers can realistically expect him to provide next year.
Taken all together, there’s plenty of rotation uncertainty going into 2025, so it should be a priority for the Rangers this winter. For the rest of the season, they will have a rotation of Eovaldi, Heaney, Bradford and Leiter. With Gray heading to the IL, perhaps Dunning will be recalled from his optional assignment. Or the club also has veterans José Ureña and Chase Anderson currently in their bullpen for long relief work, with either of them candidates to make some spot starts down the stretch.
Rangers made zero significant moves at the TD. Texas was probably hoping Max and DeGrom came back. Zero sense of urgency to repeat as champions. How do the Rangers fans feel about that?
Given how the first half of the season had gone it felt like a strategy that made sense even if I didn’t like it. They weren’t in a place to thin out farm system more after last year and health, which is hard to control, was the theme this year so waiting to see if people got healthy was the right call.
Does it suck to have a down year right after title? Yup. Did the front office have a massive fire sale and intentionally give this season low odds of success? No. It was a series of unfortunate events alas.
you can’t fix everyone but seager underperforming or turning back into complete pumpkins. might have been a little different with jung/carter healthy for more than a couple weeks but I doubt it.
if you’d told me at the deadline we’d have gotten the patchwork rotation to pitch how it did and backend re-treads to dominate in the bullpen i’d have told you we were 20 over .500.
but the offense just not even attempting to show up was not accounted for nor could it really be.
josh friggin smtih was our second best offensive player….not second most surprising, literally 2nd most dangerous threat in the lineup all year. he’s a utility player at best.
and even seager carried a sub .700 ops the first six weeks+ he should have been on the shelf instead of hobbling around trying to play through a recently repaired sports hernia
You are correct about Josh, he is a utility player, thankfully we had him because our other two bench players flopped, It was a crazy year to see 7-8 offensive players on our team flop at the same time
It’s been one heck of a bummer year, I was hoping they would have got a power hitter at the trade deadline and another starter.
I’m still hungover from last season. I’m good.
the Langford granny walk off last night vs the yanks was a nice shot in the arm too.
Could be that Bochy every other year magic
One Gray gets Sunny and the other gets the dark cloud
The Rangers need to Evoldi, add another starter, or two, sign Goldy for 1b/DH, and blow their wad on Soto.
They don’t have anywhere near enough green to even start a convo with Soto.
@seamaholic the owner is a billionaire.
We’re currently about $11-12 million over the cap for the second year, will owe around $4 million penalties, We will be losing about 6 players to free agency, unless they work some magic this winter it’s gonna be a bad winter, maybe $50-$60 spending money. We need to do some trades.
Surprisingly, Gray has not reached double-digit wins in any of his first 3 seasons with the Rangers, winning 7 games in 2022, 9 last year and 5 this year
I’m not surprised, based on what I saw when he pitched for the Rockies.