The Rangers announced that catcher Tucker Barnhart has been re-signed to a minor league deal. He had just elected free agency yesterday after clearing waivers. He’ll presumably report to Triple-A Round Rock in the coming days.
Though the Rangers just bumped Barnhart off their roster, they are likely happy to have him back in a non-roster capacity. At the big league level, they have Jonah Heim and Kyle Higashioka splitting the catching duties but they don’t have any other backstops on the 40-man.
Barnhart, 34, signed a minor league deal with the Rangers and came into the year as the top depth option at the position. That got him to the majors when Higashioka suffered a hamstring injury. He didn’t get much playing time, however. In over a month on the roster, he got into eight contests and made 15 plate appearances with a .231/.333/.231 line.
If either Heim or Higashioka heads to the injured list later this year, Barnhart will have a good chance of coming back up to the majors since he has over a decade of big league experience. He’s never been a huge threat at the plate, with a career .241/.318/.351 line and 78 wRC+, but he has received lots of praise for his glovework over the years.
Photo courtesy of David Butler II, Imagn Images
Barnhart has just over 9 years of service time. With a little bit of luck(and an injury to someone)he may just yet get to 10 years.
He already has I believe.
Baseball reference has him at 9.148 yrs of service time.
The Rangers celebrated his 10 years a few weeks back, they talked about it on the broadcast.
That was probably as of Opening Day.
That is what it was coming into the year, he crossed it now.
They don’t update it until well after the season’s over.