Locked on Rangers: Jonah Heim true value, rarity of good catchers and bullets dodged by the club.
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00:00 Jonah Heim is one of the best catchers in baseball,
00:02 but still, even after an all-star season,
00:04 he's not getting the respect he deserves
00:05 as one of the best in the game.
00:06 On today's show, I'm breaking down why that is
00:08 and three major bullets the Rangers dodged
00:11 that helped them win that 2023 World Series Championship.
00:14 All that and more on this episode of Locked on Rangers.
00:16 Let's get into it.
00:17 You are Locked on Rangers.
00:21 Your daily Texas Rangers podcast.
00:24 Part of the Locked on Podcast Network.
00:29 Your team, every day.
00:30 ♪
00:40 You are locked on to the World Series champion,
00:43 Texas Rangers. I'm Bryce Patrick,
00:44 a cripplingly addicted Texas Rangers fan
00:46 covering this team for ten seasons,
00:48 including all five as the founder and host of this podcast.
00:50 Thank you all so much for making Locked on Rangers
00:52 your first listen every single day.
00:54 If you're not already, you can follow me on Twitter
00:56 @BrycePatrick. You can follow the show
00:58 @LockedOnRangers. Hit subscribe
00:59 on your favorite podcasting platform and on YouTube,
01:01 where the best way you can help grow the show
01:03 is to comment nearly any single thing below.
01:05 Now, before we get into the greatness of Jonah Hime,
01:08 what makes him so darn special,
01:11 how important it is to have a good catcher
01:12 and three major bullets that the Rangers dodged
01:15 that helped them win that ring last year.
01:17 Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel.
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01:26 Just visit FanDuel.com/LockedOn to get started.
01:30 Now, one of the greatest moments
01:32 in Rangers franchise history
01:34 occurred in February of 2021,
01:39 an inauspicious day before spring training had started.
01:42 On February 6th of that year,
01:45 the Rangers made a trade with the Oakland A's.
01:48 They traded-- The Oakland A's traded away Jonah Hime,
01:51 Dane Acker, and old K. Chris Davis
01:54 for Elvis Andrus, Hermes Garcia, and Cash.
01:59 And a deal that is thought to be the headliner of that deal
02:03 was old Chris Davis,
02:05 who was a little bit on his last leg,
02:07 a little bit over the hill,
02:09 and just was not quite getting it done
02:12 for the contract that the Oakland A's signed him to,
02:15 which was an okay, decent contract,
02:18 not anything world-killing,
02:20 but for the Oakland A's,
02:21 anything above the major league minimum
02:24 seems to be breaking the bank.
02:26 So the Rangers said, "Hey, we've got Elvis Andrus here.
02:29 We're probably gonna make a change at shortstop.
02:31 Elvis might be a little bit over the hill as well.
02:33 We're gonna take on some of that bad money of Chris Davis
02:36 and, you know, maybe give us some guys
02:39 who will kick the tires on.
02:40 Maybe Dane Acker, who was a very injury-prone
02:43 pitching prospect who had a lot of promise,
02:46 hasn't quite worked out as well.
02:48 Chris Davis didn't quite have as much of the tank
02:50 as we were thinking.
02:52 Elvis Andrus was pretty solid for the A's
02:55 for a year and a half or so
02:57 that he was there before he got cut and sent to the White Sox.
03:02 But obviously, we now know the headliner of that deal
03:06 was one switch-hitting, all-star,
03:09 World Series champion catcher, Jonah Heim.
03:13 Now, this wasn't the first time that Jonah Heim
03:15 had been traded in his young career
03:18 before he had made an impact really at the big league level.
03:22 Initially, he was drafted by the Orioles
03:23 in the fourth round of the 2013 MLB draft
03:27 out of Amherst Central High School in New York,
03:30 just outside of Buffalo.
03:31 He had made his big league debut at that point
03:34 when he was traded to the Rangers,
03:36 played a whole 13 games, 41 played appearances
03:39 for the Oakland A's in that 2020 pandemic season
03:42 as a 25-year-old.
03:43 A very unimpressive 211, 268, 211 slash line,
03:50 no extra base hits to that point, and a 479 OPS.
03:54 And obviously, the book was out there on Jonah Heim
03:57 for his entire career, for his entire minor league career,
04:00 I should say.
04:01 He was a spectacular defensive catcher.
04:04 He was a bigger guy on the catching side at 6'4",
04:08 220 pounds.
04:10 But he'd always been a pretty good receiver,
04:12 pretty good game caller.
04:13 He had a big target, had a decent arm,
04:15 and could throw out runners OK.
04:17 Not anything spectacular.
04:20 And had a lot of raw power that he just hadn't really
04:22 quite tapped into in games.
04:25 So the Rangers made a trade for him, thinking, OK,
04:28 maybe we can get the most out of this guy.
04:30 He split time between--
04:31 as a starting catcher back in 2021 with him and Jose Trevino
04:35 and was very unspectacular.
04:38 I mean, 10 home runs that season did
04:39 have a couple of walk-off bombs that
04:41 were very, very memorable at the time.
04:44 And one of the roughest stretches of Rangers history.
04:48 But he had an OPS below 600 in 285 plate appearances.
04:52 And the thought was, OK, well, this guy
04:55 was supposed to have a lot of raw power,
04:56 supposed to have some more offensive firepower
04:58 than he's showing.
05:00 And the at-bats were much better quality, much higher quality
05:03 than the numbers would indicate in 2021.
05:06 And so before the 2022 season, the Rangers thought, OK, well,
05:10 maybe this guy is a pretty solid backup catcher or a 1B type
05:14 option, but not anything world beating.
05:16 He's obviously got that offensive potential,
05:18 but we're not quite sure if this guy is going to live up to it.
05:21 So the Rangers decided to make a trade.
05:23 They traded Jose Trevino to the Yankees.
05:25 And they also made a trade for Mitch Garver
05:28 before the 2022 season, thinking, OK,
05:30 Garver will be our starter.
05:31 And Haim will split some time with him.
05:33 He will be the injury insurance.
05:35 And we'll see how that goes.
05:36 And Jonah Haim was so spectacular in the first half
05:39 that he nearly made his first all-star appearance in 2022.
05:43 I mean, he had a 772 OPS.
05:45 And if not for-- excuse me, that's
05:47 his career splits for the first half,
05:50 because he is very much a first half kind of player.
05:53 But in 2022, if not for the Yankee bump
05:56 of his former teammate in Jose Trevino,
05:58 that 781 OPS with 12 bombs in the first half in 69 games,
06:02 that was more than good enough to start the All-Star game back
06:05 in 2022.
06:06 This guy very much could be a two-time All-Star and World
06:11 Series champ, as opposed to just one-time All-Star.
06:14 But the value of Jonah Haim is not in his bat.
06:18 I mean, partially.
06:19 It's partially in his bat.
06:21 Most of it is in his defensive value.
06:24 This is one of the best defensive catchers, if not--
06:26 no, this is the best defensive catcher in all of baseball.
06:30 Talk about the total package of controlling the running game,
06:33 calling games, framing pitches, blocking pitches,
06:36 trusting--
06:38 the staff trusting his game plan that he
06:40 is going to call the right pitch,
06:42 he is going to guide them to have a good game,
06:46 and to trust their own stuff, and believe in them,
06:49 and believe in the game plan that they and Jonah Haim
06:53 and the entire coaching staff came up with.
06:56 Even in the most difficult moments,
06:58 those pitchers, time and time again,
07:00 after nearly every single great performance--
07:03 no, after every great pitching performance
07:05 I can remember from a ranger last season,
07:07 or even the last couple of seasons,
07:09 Jonah Haim is almost always the first name out of their mouth
07:13 of, oh, who's calling so right for you?
07:16 Well, it's Jonah Haim.
07:17 I just have all the trust in the world in him out there.
07:19 My stuff was going pretty well.
07:20 He was calling a great game.
07:21 But I just trusted that Jonah Haim had my back.
07:24 And that's an incredibly valuable thing.
07:27 It is something that is very difficult--
07:29 impossible, really, to quantify.
07:31 But it is real.
07:32 The effect is real.
07:35 I mean, we saw pitchers in the postseason
07:38 get into big, big jams, like Nate Eovaldi quite a lot,
07:42 getting himself in jams and getting himself out.
07:44 That is partially because Nate Eovaldi
07:46 is an absolute bulldog in the playoffs,
07:47 and also partly because he's got all the trust
07:51 in the world in Jonah Haim.
07:52 If he's throwing a breaking ball or a splitter down
07:55 in the dirt for a chase pitch with a runner on third base,
07:59 he trusts that Jonah Haim is going to block that pitch,
08:01 and it's not going to get by it and not going to let it run it.
08:04 And he can trust whatever he needs to throw,
08:07 Jonah Haim and his big 6'4" frame back there
08:10 is going to be back there to catch it and to block it.
08:12 And whatever Jonah Haim calls is the right call.
08:17 There's not a lot of second guessing.
08:18 There's not a lot of getting in your own head
08:20 about what the game plan is.
08:23 Because if Jonah Haim's back there, whatever he says goes.
08:28 And whatever he says is, for the most part, right.
08:33 But not only his defensive value,
08:34 being one of the best fielding catchers,
08:37 in terms of the overall catch-all metrics
08:39 according to baseball savant, he was in the 97th percentile
08:43 in terms of overall fielding value.
08:46 That's overall defense in general.
08:49 He was one of the top 3% of all people in all of baseball.
08:53 I don't think that's just catching.
08:54 I'm pretty sure that's a catch-all metric
08:56 for all players playing defense.
08:59 He's in the top 3%.
09:01 When it comes to framing, he's in the top 3% of baseball.
09:04 Yet again, caught stealing above average
09:05 in the top 11% of baseball.
09:07 Now, that's really impressive because his pop time,
09:10 the amount of time it takes for him once the ball hits
09:13 his glove to hit the glove of the second baseman
09:16 or shortstop covering to get the runner out,
09:20 that's around middle of the pack.
09:22 But his caught stealing is in the top 11% of baseball.
09:26 It's not about the pop time as much.
09:29 It's important to have a strong arm
09:31 to be able to get that ball out quickly.
09:34 But the thing about Jonah Heim that is so impressive
09:36 and one of the highlights of the postseason
09:39 for this entire Rangers run was that caught stealing
09:42 of Gunnar Henderson in the ninth inning
09:44 that was a missed sign read on a hit and run,
09:49 but still resulted in a huge, huge caught stealing
09:54 is that Jonah Heim hits his mark every single time
09:57 when he is throwing at runners.
09:58 He may have toned down a little bit
10:00 of the absolute raw arm strength.
10:02 He might not be, you know, Pudge Rodriguez back there
10:06 with the biggest cannon that we've ever seen
10:09 or Jorge Alfaro, a blast from the past guy
10:12 who has an absolute monster cannon of an arm.
10:15 But he is on time, on the money every single time
10:19 he is throwing out these runners.
10:20 He's not gonna get everybody.
10:21 And with these expanded stealing rules,
10:23 it was something I was worried about with him last year.
10:25 His times weren't as good.
10:27 His pop time still wasn't great
10:28 and he wasn't quite as accurate at stealing
10:30 as throwing at runners.
10:32 But that's something he improved on very massively this year.
10:35 And not only that, but being consistent with his bat,
10:39 which is one of the reasons why he is so important.
10:41 Coming up into that, why it's so important
10:43 to have a good hitting catcher
10:44 and those three bullets that the Rangers dodged
10:46 to help them win that championship last year.
10:48 Just a second.
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11:45 Shout out to the everydayers for making Locked On Rangers
11:47 your first listen every single day.
11:48 On tomorrow, Sean will be back and talking about why Nathaniel
11:50 Lowe is such an important part of this lineup
11:52 and why he's primed for a massive, massive offensive
11:55 season this year.
11:57 Now, Jonah Hyme is inarguably phenomenal defensively.
12:02 But what makes him so incredibly valuable is his offense.
12:07 Last year alone, before the injury,
12:09 that's where things really got off the rails for him
12:11 was that wrist injury.
12:13 Spent a couple of weeks on the IL and came back a lot sooner
12:16 than many people anticipated, including myself.
12:20 And he just did not look right at the plate
12:21 for almost the entirety of the end of that season
12:26 from the last couple of months.
12:27 And even the playoffs was a little rough.
12:30 He had a couple of really nice home runs against Fromber,
12:32 where I am trying to coin the nickname the Fromber Bomber.
12:35 If he has one more home run against Fromber Valdez
12:39 in the playoffs or otherwise, I feel like that nickname
12:41 will hopefully stick.
12:43 But his offensive value is why this guy was named
12:47 an All-Star last season.
12:48 He is an incredibly fast starter in his career.
12:52 And last year was absolutely no different.
12:55 In the first half last season, at Midway Point,
12:58 he was hitting .282 with an 8.12 OPS and 12 home runs,
13:03 which is why he started the All-Star game.
13:06 At that point, he was the best offensive catcher,
13:08 the best overall catcher in the American League.
13:11 He was a little bit behind Sean Murphy for what he was doing
13:14 over in the National League,
13:15 the insane start that he got off to.
13:18 But hey, those votes did not matter in the American League,
13:23 or for the American League,
13:24 what Sean Murphy was doing over in the National League,
13:26 because Jonah Hine was absolutely crushing it.
13:29 Even before that injury, his slash line looked like this.
13:32 Hitting .280 with a .337 on-base percentage
13:36 and a .479 slugging percentage.
13:38 An 8.16 OPS with 14 home runs and 23 doubles as a catcher.
13:44 A switch hitter.
13:46 A guy who is in the heart of the most dangerous lineup
13:50 in the American League.
13:52 As a switch hitting catcher,
13:53 hitting sixth for the majority of the season.
13:56 And he is doing damage.
13:58 Not only that, but also you factored the importance
14:01 of a great defensive catcher.
14:04 I mean, look at these teams who have been dynasties.
14:06 Look at these lineups that are so incredibly good right now.
14:10 It's because they don't have a weak spot in their lineup.
14:13 Look at the Dodgers with Will Smith as their catcher.
14:16 Look at the Braves with Sean Murphy as their catcher.
14:20 Heck, look at the Orioles with Adley Rutchman
14:22 as their catcher.
14:23 The best offenses in baseball
14:27 don't have a weak spot in their lineup.
14:29 It's because they get premium offense
14:31 from a premium defensive position
14:33 where normally there's not a lot of offense coming.
14:36 But even if you don't have a lot of offense from your catcher,
14:39 you got to get a lot of defensive value.
14:41 And some of these teams that have been so incredibly good
14:43 for sustained periods of time,
14:45 I think specifically about the Cardinals and Yadier Molina
14:50 and how incredibly good they were
14:51 for such a long, long, long time.
14:54 And how every year it seemed that the Cardinals
14:56 were getting the most out of their pitchers.
14:59 And in year one, without Yadier Molina,
15:03 their pitchers were incredibly terrible this year.
15:08 I mean, Contreras was a fine defensive catcher.
15:11 Not great, not elite,
15:13 but they were panicking so much with the absence of Yadier.
15:15 I mean, Cardinals fans would scream at you
15:17 for years and years and years and years
15:19 about how incredibly valuable
15:20 having a guy like Yadier Molina was behind the plate.
15:24 How much he did for the pitching staff,
15:25 how much he did, you know, in general.
15:28 And even though he was basically an offensive zero
15:31 at the plate for most of his career,
15:34 he was still beloved and incredibly valued.
15:38 And you kind of saw a little bit,
15:40 it's hard to quantify that it's just Yadier Molina leaving,
15:43 but it was a pretty obvious impact
15:45 on how bad the Cardinals were this year.
15:47 It was the first time they were straight up bad
15:48 in, I don't know, what, 30 years?
15:52 It's been a long, long time.
15:55 And Yadier Molina was a big part of that consistency.
15:58 Now, I'm not saying that Jonah Heim
15:59 is Yadier Molina defensively.
16:01 No, that is a incredibly high bar to set.
16:06 But I'm saying that he is an incredibly valuable
16:08 defensive catcher, and I think the best defensive catcher
16:11 in baseball in terms of overall competence
16:15 and overall skill.
16:17 And he also adds a switch hitting,
16:20 power hitting element to that value.
16:24 But according to MLB Network
16:26 and their top 100 players right now,
16:28 I know this is, I feel like all of their player rankings
16:31 of their top 10 right now at each position or what have you,
16:36 or their overall top 100, it was created as bait,
16:40 maybe for me specifically.
16:42 And unfortunately, I keep on taking the bait
16:45 because there are a lot of catchers
16:46 in this top 100 right now.
16:48 And unless Jonah Heim is in the top 10,
16:51 which they haven't revealed right now,
16:52 which I think would be a bit aggressive,
16:55 but I wouldn't say no, because I love catchers.
16:58 I think they're so incredibly important
17:00 and so incredibly overlooked a lot of times.
17:02 But unless he's in that top 10,
17:04 he's not in the top 100 at all.
17:07 Here's some of the other names
17:08 that they have in there at this point.
17:11 Adley Rudgeman is the highest at this point at 19 overall,
17:14 best players in baseball.
17:15 That's fine, I think that's solid.
17:17 If you wanna put Adley Rudgeman over Jonah Heim,
17:19 I think that's fine.
17:20 He was the all MLB first team catcher this year, cool.
17:25 Will Smith at 45.
17:27 All right, he's not that valuable defensively.
17:30 He's not that great a defensive catcher.
17:32 He's much better offensively.
17:34 He's maybe the best offensive catcher in the game
17:36 and has been for several years.
17:38 That's fine, I get it.
17:39 JT Ryamoto, who seemed like he was unquestionably
17:43 the best catcher in all baseball heading into 2023,
17:47 but really, really fell off a cliff last year.
17:49 Had a 1.6 FanCrafts War season
17:52 as a catcher that's hard to do
17:53 when framing is added into your defensive metrics.
17:57 Sean Murphy at 47, fine.
17:59 William Contreras, 81, okay, starting to have some gripes.
18:03 Wilson Contreras at 82, okay,
18:07 really starting to have some gripes.
18:08 Cal Raleigh at 93, really?
18:11 You think Cal Raleigh's better defensively or offensively?
18:14 And then Gabriel Moreno at 94,
18:18 who spent one year in the big leagues,
18:21 was an offensive zero,
18:22 and the main defensive quality he has
18:25 is being amazing at throwing out runners trying to steal.
18:28 Like, he was historically good, don't get me wrong.
18:31 That was a lot of value there.
18:33 But the overall framing and blocking
18:37 and just general defensive impact was not there.
18:42 And the bat was clearly not anywhere near Jonah Himes' level.
18:48 I mean, we saw that in the World Series.
18:50 He was hitting third for this team
18:52 that won the National League,
18:54 and they had him sacrifice bunting in the World Series.
18:58 That's the kind of trust they have in his offensive value.
19:03 And I feel like I should say everything
19:06 about how he is not a better catcher than Jonah Himes.
19:10 Cal Raleigh, not a better catcher than Jonah Himes.
19:12 Wilson Contreras, not a better catcher than Jonah Himes.
19:16 The rest of these guys,
19:17 I can kind of squint and see how you would get there,
19:20 but to not have Jonah Himes, the all-star starting catcher,
19:24 the all-MLB second team, World Series champion catcher,
19:29 in the top 100 players right now, it's insane.
19:32 It's absolutely ludicrous to me
19:35 that Jonah Himes is not one of the best 100 players
19:38 in all of baseball.
19:40 If he's not one of the top 100 catchers in all of baseball,
19:41 then I'd really start to go absolutely nuts.
19:45 But it's not just that he's that good.
19:47 It's that he's that valuable as well.
19:51 This is the first year Jonah Himes is in arbitration,
19:54 arbitration eligible.
19:55 He is making $3 million and $3,050,000,
20:01 which is the 23rd highest paid catcher
20:04 in all of Major League Baseball.
20:06 Here's some guys who are getting paid more
20:08 than Jonah Himes this year.
20:10 Austin Barnes, Austin Hedges, Tom Murphy, Carson Kelly,
20:15 Martin Maldonado, Jan Goms, Max Stasse,
20:20 Omar Narvaez, Christian Vasquez,
20:24 James McCann is making four times as much money as him.
20:28 And then the top three are JT Romuto, Salvador Perez,
20:31 and Wilson Contreras, which, fine.
20:34 Even Mitch Garver is making about three times
20:36 as much money as him, which, fine.
20:38 That's how free agency works.
20:40 But still, Jonah Himes is one of the best players
20:42 in all of baseball.
20:43 He is a switch hitting catcher,
20:44 he is an absolute diamond in the rough,
20:46 such an important part of having a great defensive catcher,
20:49 who also provides you that pop, is an all-star,
20:51 is one of the best catchers in baseball,
20:53 is one of the best players in all of baseball,
20:55 and the Rangers have got him for three more seasons.
20:59 He is a huge part of why they were so good this year,
21:02 a huge part of why the pitching staff
21:03 was able to pitch over its head at times,
21:06 and a huge part of why this team won the 2023 World Series.
21:10 Coming up, we're gonna look at three big bullets
21:13 that the Rangers dodged that made it possible
21:15 for them to win that World Series last year,
21:17 right after this break from our sponsors.
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22:27 Shout out to the aviators for making Lockdown Rangers
22:32 your first listen every single day.
22:33 On Friday, Shia will be back, either in the late afternoon,
22:36 or maybe it'll be on Saturday.
22:37 Talking about the Rangers' first spring training game,
22:40 and all the, I'm sure, many, many things
22:42 we will learn from that spring training game.
22:45 But there's one last thing I want to talk about
22:47 with Jonah Heim, and that is the key for him this season.
22:50 I am incredibly psyched for what Jonah Heim is going to do
22:53 in his third, fourth full season with the Rangers,
22:57 third as the primary starting catcher,
23:00 and coming off an All-Star season and championship.
23:02 I think it is all about maintaining his first half
23:06 offensive production in the second half.
23:08 I mean, the last couple of years,
23:09 the first month of the season,
23:10 he's gone absolutely nuclear in his career.
23:13 Just absolutely nuclear.
23:15 In April, March this year, he had a,
23:19 he played in 10 games, and he had a 1,044 OPS.
23:24 1,044.
23:26 It was absolutely nuts.
23:27 Actually, I think that might have been,
23:28 you know, that was 2022.
23:29 But this year, he was also insane.
23:31 In 23 games there, had a 979 OPS.
23:35 Five home runs that month.
23:37 I mean, the guy absolutely gets off to a hot start.
23:40 But maintaining it and maintaining his body
23:42 is difficult as a bigger catcher,
23:45 just as a catcher in general.
23:46 It is a beating to be a catcher.
23:49 You take a lot of foul balls, a lot of, you know,
23:52 pitches in the dirt, just a lot of abuse.
23:54 And occasionally you get hit with a bat on a backswing,
23:57 which is very unfun.
23:59 But just staying healthy, maintaining his body,
24:01 you know, being able to deal with the grind
24:03 of being an everyday catcher,
24:04 being an all-star caliber catcher,
24:06 catching as many games as he can
24:08 with Andrew Kisner as his backup.
24:10 I think that is going to be the key for Jotunheim
24:13 so that when the Rangers get to the postseason again
24:15 this year, knock on wood, he is ready
24:18 and ready to make an impact with that big old bat of his.
24:21 Now, there are three major bullets
24:24 that the Rangers dodged.
24:25 Some of it was good luck.
24:26 Some of it was other people negotiating a little bit
24:28 better.
24:29 Some of it was just randomness
24:31 that precluded these things from happening.
24:34 But looking back at these three alternate timelines
24:38 where these things happened, or just even where
24:40 one of these things happened, I think any one of these three
24:42 could have derailed the Rangers' chances
24:44 to win that World Series last year.
24:47 The first major bullet the Rangers dodged
24:50 is signing Anthony Rendon after the 2019 season
24:55 to a seven-year, $245 million contract.
25:02 I think pretty clearly it is the worst contract
25:05 in all of baseball.
25:07 He had one decent season.
25:08 He was heading into his age 30 season.
25:10 It was not anything crazy at the time.
25:13 I mean, seven years and $245 million
25:15 for a guy who had been very consistent,
25:18 had been an all-star.
25:19 It's just coming off a championship
25:21 where he helped lead the Nationals to that 2019 World
25:25 Series title.
25:27 And the Rangers were very much in on Anthony Rendon.
25:30 This was coming off of a year removed,
25:34 of one year without Adrian Beltre.
25:38 There were still some questions about Josh Young.
25:40 I believe Josh Young had been drafted a few months earlier.
25:44 Yeah, 2019.
25:45 That was when he was drafted.
25:46 And so this was the off-season after 2019,
25:48 before the 2020 pandemic.
25:50 The Rangers thought, oh boy, let's get in on this free agent.
25:52 Let's start this rebuild.
25:53 Let's actually go about this, be about this process.
25:58 And for whatever reason, whether it
25:59 was the Angels outbidding them or just Anthony Rendon
26:02 liking the Angels better, he went to the Los Angeles Angels.
26:06 And it has been an abject disaster ever since.
26:09 The guy had a really fantastic 2020 season.
26:12 He played 52 games of that shortened season and 915 OPS.
26:17 But ever since then, it has been nothing but downhill.
26:22 He's played in 148 games in the last three seasons combined,
26:26 58, 47, 43.
26:29 He has been a disaster at the plate.
26:31 Only one year we had an OPS plus of 100 or more.
26:35 And it was exactly at 100.
26:38 And he's still got three years left on his contract.
26:41 And he keeps talking about how baseball is not my top priority.
26:46 It is not the thing that I am working my butt off for.
26:49 It is not the thing that I love.
26:50 This is a day job.
26:51 And it pays me pretty well.
26:53 But I don't really even like it that much.
26:55 I don't watch baseball when I'm not playing.
26:59 And it's just a bad look for a guy who has just had one of the
27:06 sharpest fall offs I think I've seen from a player in a long,
27:09 long time.
27:10 His last year with the Nationals,
27:13 it was his first and somehow only All-Star season.
27:16 Played in 146 games that year.
27:18 Had a 6.7 war season, according to baseball reference.
27:21 And finished third in MVP voting.
27:23 Was an All-Star and a Silver Slugger.
27:24 And won a World Series title.
27:26 And since then, he finished 10th in that shortened 2020 season
27:30 in MVP voting because he had a objectively really, really great
27:33 year in the short season.
27:34 2.3 war, 52 games is nothing to sneeze at.
27:39 And then since then, staying on the field,
27:42 going through the rehab process, even talking to the media
27:44 about what was going on with his rehab process
27:47 in the last few years has been like pulling teeth.
27:49 It's just an abject disaster of a contract, of a situation.
27:54 Meanwhile, he's got his teammate Mike Trout, Shohei Otani,
27:57 just left.
27:58 Mike Trout is talking about how I don't ever
28:00 want to be traded because that's taking the hard way out.
28:01 And I love baseball.
28:02 And I love playing for the Angels.
28:03 And I want to stay here for my entire career
28:05 and bring a championship here.
28:07 And with this albatross of a contract,
28:09 it is going to be a rough, rough battle for Mike Trout.
28:13 I mean, if he couldn't do it with Shohei Otani there,
28:15 I mean, I just feel bad for this man at this point.
28:19 He signed on to stay there for the long term,
28:21 knowing how much of a mess the Angels were.
28:24 And maybe it's just the Angels-ness
28:25 that infected Anthony Rendon with all of this nonsense,
28:30 you know, trash fire of a situation.
28:33 But there's no guarantee that that wouldn't happen exactly
28:35 the same way with the Rangers.
28:38 Instead, the Rangers have a third baseman
28:41 who started the All-Star game this year, won a championship,
28:44 is going into his age, what, 26 season, I believe,
28:50 and is under contract for another five years.
28:54 For significantly less than the $38 million a year.
28:58 Yes, $38 million for this year, next year, and 2026
29:02 that Anthony Rendon is making.
29:04 Whew.
29:05 Talk about a bullet dodged.
29:07 Because the Rangers are having money problems now.
29:09 I mean, with this, I don't know if the Rangers could
29:10 have signed Seager and Simeon and DeGrom
29:13 and all those others.
29:14 And if they didn't do that, then they
29:16 are not winning the 2023 World Series Championship.
29:20 Next bullet that the Rangers dodged.
29:21 This was a weird situation for the Rangers
29:25 after heading into 2023.
29:27 It was a long time that Trevor Story was still a free agent.
29:29 And there were some incredible rumblings right around,
29:32 I think it was December.
29:33 Maybe it was January.
29:35 Because it took a long time for Trevor Story to sign.
29:37 But not signing Trevor Story prior to last season
29:42 was a big, big hit for the Rangers.
29:46 He signed a six-year $140 million deal.
29:49 Actually, I believe that might have been--
29:51 how long has he been with the Boston Red Sox?
29:54 Yeah, no, before the 2022 season.
29:55 That's when it was.
29:56 Because there were some thoughts after the Rangers
29:58 had already signed Simeon and Seager.
30:00 They thought, why don't we make it three highly paid,
30:04 highly touted infielders and go get Trevor Story?
30:08 And it's been a rough go of it for Trevor Story.
30:11 In 2022, he was OK, but only played in 94 games,
30:15 had a 102 OPS plus, just kind of average.
30:20 Didn't play a whole lot of shortstop either,
30:22 which was the whole point of paying him there,
30:25 to play shortstop.
30:26 Played a little bit more shortstop this year.
30:28 But only played in 43 games and had a 50 OPS plus.
30:34 Yeah, 50.
30:35 He was half as good as the average Major League bat.
30:39 That is rough.
30:40 And he's still got several more years, I believe,
30:42 four more years on that contract.
30:44 He's going to be 31 this year.
30:45 And Rangers really missed a bullet there
30:50 by not signing Trevor Story.
30:52 Possibly because of some leaks from the hitting coach's son.
30:56 I don't know.
30:57 Still a weird situation.
30:59 Glad the Rangers ended up doing exactly what they did that
31:02 led to that 2023 World Championship.
31:04 And the last bullet the Rangers dodged
31:06 is not signing Michael Conforto before the 2023 season.
31:10 So we got three different off seasons
31:12 where different domino effects led to different places.
31:15 Conforto ended up signing with the Giants.
31:17 And it's not as much that Conforto
31:18 has been an abject disaster.
31:20 It was, I believe, a two-year contract
31:22 or with a second year option.
31:24 Because the Rangers didn't get that left fielder
31:26 that I thought they needed before last season,
31:28 they had some extra money to spend.
31:29 And so they thought, all right, well, you can never
31:31 have enough starting pitching.
31:32 So let's go get this guy, Nathan Evalde,
31:35 as a nice Christmas present to Rangers fans.
31:38 At the time when I thought, OK, you
31:41 bought a lot of starting pitchers.
31:42 I don't know that you really needed this money.
31:44 But sure, this guy seems fine.
31:45 And he is a World Series hero, a World Series champion,
31:49 and had his great World Series moment in that game 5
31:52 to erase the memory of him going six scoreless innings--
31:56 or six innings in extra innings in a 2018 World Series loss
32:01 to where that game 5 performance of six shutout innings
32:04 of riding the tight wire act, that
32:07 is the defining moment of Nathan Evalde's postseason career.
32:11 But what a three bullets at the Rangers.
32:13 Dodge, it goes to show you the margins
32:15 for winning these championships.
32:16 I mean, making a trade for Jonah Hine,
32:19 making trades for Daniel Lowe, picking up Adolphe Garcia,
32:22 getting lucky that they missed out on the guys
32:24 they missed out on and ended up signing the right guys.
32:28 So glad that it all went the Rangers way.
32:30 And I will never stop being appreciative of that 2023
32:33 World Series championship.
32:34 That's going to do it for today's show.
32:35 Thank you all so much for listening
32:37 and subscribing, and until next time,
32:39 don't forget to enjoy World Series champion Texas Rangers
32:41 baseball.
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