Rangers Notes: deGrom, Seager, Carter, Jung

Rangers right-hander Jacob deGrom is enjoying the first fully healthy offseason he’s had in quite some time after returning from rehab for Tommy John surgery back in September. As noted by Shawn McFarland of the Dallas Morning News, deGrom spoke to reporters about his outlook headed into the 2025 season and revealed that he’s begun throwing off the mound early this winter. The veteran hopes that building up towards pitching in games more slowly over a longer period of time than he has in the past will help him to stay healthy this season.

The 36-year-old is perhaps the very best pitcher in the entire sport when healthy, but maintaining his health has been a struggle over the past half decade. After winning back-to-back NL Cy Young awards with the Mets in 2018 and ’19 and finishing third during the shortened 2020 season, deGrom got off to an unbelievable start in 2021 with a 1.08 ERA and an eye-popping 45.1% strikeout rate. Unfortunately, he was sidelined in early July with forearm and elbow issues that ultimately ended his season. It’s been more of the same ever since, with deGrom making increasingly brief appearances in the majors each year but nonetheless continuing to dominate whenever he’s on the mound.

Since the start of the 2021 season, deGrom has pitched to a 2.01 ERA (200 ERA+) with a 1.63 FIP and 307 strikeouts in 197 1/3 innings. That would be on a shortlist for the greatest pitching seasons of all time if it hadn’t taken deGrom parts of four seasons to accumulate those numbers, and after watching Jordan Montgomery and Max Scherzer depart from their rotation in back-to-back offseasons the Rangers are surely hoping that they’ll get to see what deGrom can do over a full slate of starts this year. That’s something deGrom is fully on board with, as he told reporters (including McFarland) yesterday that his goal is to make 30 starts this year.

While McFarland notes that deGrom has not yet spoken to Rangers brass about his workload for 2025, the idea of a pitcher with deGrom’s injury history making 30 starts can’t be entirely dismissed. After all, southpaw Garrett Crochet made 32 starts with the White Sox last year despite not having pitched more than 65 innings in a season throughout college and his entire professional career due to injuries and time spent in the bullpen. The White Sox made that possible by aggressively managing his innings throughout the second half. He never recorded an out in the fifth inning this year after the calendar flipped to July and his pitch count maxed out at 77 after the All-Star break. Crochet, of course, is more than a decade younger than deGrom, but this sort of aggressive innings management could allow the Rangers to utilize their ace all throughout the regular season and into the playoffs without him needing to throw anything close to 200 innings.

deGrom isn’t the only key player for the Rangers who is hoping for better health in 2024. McFarland relays that third baseman Josh Jung, outfielder Evan Carter, and shortstop Corey Seager are all healthy and ready for Spring Training next month after undergoing surgeries in the fall. Seager underwent sports hernia surgery back in September but resumed baseball activities in November, while Jung and Carter are on a slightly more delayed timeline after undergoing wrist and back surgery respectively in October.

That trio being healthy and effective in 2025 would be a huge boon for the Rangers who failed to defend their 2023 World Series title in the 2024 postseason in large part thanks to a lackluster offense. Rangers hitters produced a collective wRC+ of just 95 last year as Seager was limited to 123 games by injuries while Jung and Carter managed just 46 and 45 games respectively. Seager remained as effective as ever when healthy enough to take the field with a .278/.353/.521 slash line in 533 trips to the plate, but Jung (102 wRC+) and especially Carter (80 wRC+) struggled to keep up with their expected production even when they were on the field due to the nagging nature of their injuries.

While the club has augmented its offense this winter by bringing in Joc Pederson and Jake Burger to replace Nathaniel Lowe in the lineup, better health from Jung and Carter figure to be necessary if the Rangers hope to look more like their 2023 offense, which was third in baseball with a 116 wRC+, than their below-average 2024 club in the upcoming season. Healthy seasons from Jung and Carter would also come with the benefit of pushing outfielder Leody Taveras and infielder Josh Smith into bench roles, giving them one of the deeper positional groups in the sport when fully healthy.