Rangers Sign Tyler Alexander

December 15th: The Rangers officially announced the signing. Alexander’s deal will pay him a $1.125MM base salary and he can unlock another $1.125MM via performance bonuses, rep Jon Morosi of MLB Network.

December 12th: The Rangers are signing left-hander Tyler Alexander to a one-year contract, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN. Salary figures for the SSG Baseball client haven’t been reported. Texas entered the night with 35 players on their roster. That’ll jump to 38 once they finalize their contracts with Alexander, Danny Jansen (covered here) and Alexis Díaz (covered here).

Alexander will provide a multi-inning arm out of Skip Schumaker’s bullpen. The 31-year-old logged 97 2/3 innings across 52 appearances between the Brewers and White Sox this year. He started five games, all but one coming with Milwaukee in the beginning of the season, but spent the bulk of the year pitching 3-4 inning stints in relief. While the Rangers could theoretically give him a look in the rotation, it’s more likely they’d view Jacob Latz as a true swing option while pitching Alexander in low-leverage relief.

The southpaw was hit hard over his few months in Milwaukee. He carried a 6.19 ERA in 36 1/3 frames when they designated him for assignment in June. Alexander cleared waivers but found an immediate MLB opportunity in Chicago once he hit free agency. He pitched well enough as a veteran bullpen piece to stick on the roster for the reminder of the season. Alexander worked to a 4.26 earned run average over 61 1/3 innings in a White Sox uniform. He had a modest 20.1% strikeout rate but limited the walks and hard contact reasonably well.

That was enough to earn another big league contract. It comes with the added bonus of being with his hometown club. Alexander is a Southlake, Texas native who played collegiately at TCU. He was a second-round pick by the Tigers in 2015 and has spent the majority of his career in Detroit. Alexander owns a 4.63 ERA over parts of seven seasons. He sits in the 90-91 MPH range but mixes five pitches and did a decent job staying off barrels this year.

The Rangers constructed their 2025 bullpen mostly with a series of cheap one-year free agent pickups. It worked as well as they could’ve hoped, as the relief corps turned in a 3.62 ERA despite ranking 20th in strikeout rate and finishing third from the bottom in average fastball velocity. It’s not going to be easy to replicate. They’re likely in for a similar effort this offseason.

RosterResource estimated the Rangers’ payroll around $167MM heading into the evening. Evenly distributing Jansen’s salaries would push that close to $174MM. Contract terms for the two pitchers are unreported, though it’s unlikely they cost more than a couple million dollars between the two of them. Texas opened the 2025 season with a player payroll around $218MM. They’ve been clear that number is coming down.

Image courtesy of Patrick Gorski, Imagn Images.