The Rangers announced Wednesday that they’ve signed veteran right-handed reliever Hunter Strickland to a minor league deal with an invitation to big league camp. The All Bases Covered client will be reunited with his first big league skipper, Bruce Bochy, who managed him as a rookie with the 2014 Giants.
Strickland, 36, has had a rollercoaster run in terms of year-to-year performance recently, but he’s coming off a strong season with the Angels. Last year, the right-hander tossed a career-high 73 1/3 innings for the Halos and recorded a tidy 3.31 earned run average in that time.
Strickland’s 19.4% strikeout rate was lower than average and the 22.2% mark he carried into the 2024 campaign, but he turned in a solid 8.2% walk rate and did a nice job avoiding hard contact. Opponents averaged 88.9 mph off the bat against him and logged a 35.5% hard-hit rate. Strickland has long been adept at inducing harmless infield flies, and that continued in 2024 when 16% of his fly-balls were of the infield variety. That’s a good bit higher than the league-average 10% and generally tracks with Strickland’s career rate dating back to 2017 (15.7%).
While Strickland has had some rough seasons throughout his career, he’s been good far more often than he’s been ineffective. He touts a 3.40 ERA in his career and a 3.61 mark across the past three seasons. His heater has dropped a good bit from the 98 mph he averaged early in his career, sitting at 94.5 mph in Anaheim last year, but Strickland has generally remained a solid middle relief arm.
The Rangers have completely overhauled their bullpen this offseason, bidding farewell to Kirby Yates, Jose Leclerc, Andrew Chafin and, presumably, David Robertson. While Robertson remains unsigned, the Rangers are about $4.5MM shy of the luxury tax threshold, per RosterResource, and ownership appears loath to cross that mark once again.
In place of that departed quartet, Texas has acquired Robert Garcia from the Nationals (in exchange for Nate Lowe) and signed free agents Chris Martin, Hoby Milner, Shawn Armstrong, Jacob Webb and Luke Jackson to small big league deals ranging from $5.5MM guaranteed (Martin) to $1.25MM (Webb, Armstrong).
Strickland will compete with fellow non-roster vets like Jesse Chavez and JT Chargois as he vies for a spot in Bochy’s bullpen. He’s an Article XX(b) free agent (i.e. six years of service, finished the prior season on a major league roster/injured list), meaning that his minor league deal will have three uniform opt-out dates included by default: five days before Opening Day (March 22), May 1 and June 1.
This guy will always be one of favourites. In 2019, he autographed my mariners hat before a June game, and to this day he is still the only autograph I have ever gotten. So best of luck of him.
Are the Phillies on the Rangers’ 2025 schedule anywhere? Prepare the fireworks.
Yes. We’re playing them at home.
gil: In this era where the AL and NL line is blurred by “interleague play”, everyone plays everyone.
Good point. Rumor has it they want to finally settle this mano-a-mano, no-holds-barred on the 7th anniversary of the original incident.
Hunter pitched under Boch and had a solid season last year. so this is a good low-risk signing from the Rangers.
strickland – the guy whose temper ended mike morse’s career
Naw. Morse did not have to involve himself in that dustup. Many Giants did not, including Buster.
morse was trying to break it up when he got a career ending concussion
Morse had some agency and chose to be involved. Samardzija was the one looking to brawl who concussed him.
No risk and he did have a pretty good year in 2024. Why not give him a look?
Him and harper are best friends
He and Harper. Use subject pronouns to replace nouns that are in the subject position in the sentence.
Grammar police belongs in school not mlb trade rumor chat, go grade another paper and use your authority with your students not fellow adults who contrubute to society just like you do.
He and Tom contrubute to society and mlb trade rumor chat.
@Tom,
Ya dun good to defend yerself.
Surprised the Angels died bring him back as he was pretty solid for them last season
It was Arte, not Hunter Strickland who killed the Angels.
He wouldn’t have made the team as they have too many young arms. But I would’ve been fine to have him in the minors as bullpen depth.
One of the biggest home runs I ever saw in my life was Harper taking this guy deep in the division series at Nats Park.
I’ll never forgive Strickland for throwing the pitch that started the brawl that probably forced Michael Morse to retire.
We need him to plunk Harper
Do you have a particular body part in mind?
The face. (You psycho.)
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Can’t believe how much of a workhorse he was last year.
This isn’t about “revamping the bullpen”—it’s about keeping payroll in check while giving the illusion of staying competitive. Texas is walking a fine line between contention and financial restraint, which could come back to bite them if these budget arms fail under pressure.
Last year we had a decent bullpen and didn’t contend. The year before we won a World Series with a dodgy bullpen. I don’t necessarily disagree but if our staff is healthy, we will be in ballgames and if our lineup is as good as it looks, we will score a lot of runs. Hoping that will be enough.
Hunter Strickland is a class A Asshat and has been his entire career. I’d bet on Chargois over him