The Rangers are poised to enter Spring Training this year with a dilemma that they haven’t had in recent years: no experienced closers on their roster. Kirby Yates, David Robertson, and Jose Leclerc had a combined 313 saves under their belts when they departed Texas for free agency back in November after serving as the Rangers’ late-inning relief corps in 2024, and the year prior to that lefty Will Smith closed games for the Rangers despite a shaky 4.40 ERA thanks in part to the two 30+ save seasons he had under his belt before he arrived in Texas. This year, however, the club has no such experienced closer to lean on in the ninth inning.
Veteran reliever Chris Martin has the dominant relief numbers often associated with the closer role, but has just 14 career saves and has not recorded more than four in a single season before. Those 14 saves are still enough to make him the most experienced ninth-inning arm in the Rangers’ new-look bullpen, which added interesting pieces like Robert Garcia, Hoby Milner, and Jacob Webb who have pitched well in the past but never been used as a closer. Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News noted that it’s possible the club won’t have clearly defined roles in the bullpen entering the season due to the lack of a clear top closing option, though he added that there have been at least “internal discussions” about the possibility of using veteran starter Jon Gray in the ninth inning.
Grant emphasizes that as things currently stand, Gray appears to be more valuable to the club as a starter given the innings he can provide. 2024 was the first 162-game season of Gray’s career where he posted less than 20 starts and 110 innings of work since his nine-start cup of coffee with the Rockies as a rookie back in 2013, and with 1216 2/3 innings of work (including 387 1/3 in a Rangers uniform) under his belt Gray is valuable source of steadiness in a Texas rotation mix filled with aging, oft-injured, or young and unproven arms. Given that, it would hardly be a surprise to see the club simply stick with Gray in the rotation and use Martin for the lion’s share of save chances, or perhaps simply play matchups in the ninth inning without anointing a closer at all.
Even so, the idea of Gray as a reliever is a somewhat intriguing one. Gray was used out of the bullpen four times in 2024, the most he’s ever pitched in relief in his career to this point. While Gray’s seven innings of work out of the bullpen are much too small of a sample size to draw any major conclusions from, his brief work in the role was nothing short of dominant: Gray pitched to a 1.29 ERA in those four appearances with a phenomenal 37% strikeout rate against a 7.4% walk rate. Those are the kind of numbers that could be truly game-changing for a Rangers club that has struggled to find production in the bullpen in recent years, making a potential role change for Gray at least worth considering.
While it seems unlikely that the Rangers would move Gray to the bullpen to start the season, perhaps it could become a more feasible option as the season develops. The Rangers have very little certainty in their rotation, but huge amounts of upside. Top draft picks Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter figure to try and force their way into the rotation with the club this year, and healthy seasons from Jacob deGrom and Tyler Mahle would be able to turn the club’s starting five from a question mark to a major strength quite suddenly. If things are looking up for the club in the rotation this summer, perhaps Gray’s 4.70 ERA in 19 starts last year becomes less attractive as a steady, back-end option and the club decides to see what the 33-year-old can do as a full-time reliever.
