Rangers Look More Balanced After Late-December Moves

After last year’s disappointing follow-up to their 2023 World Series-winning season, the Texas Rangers jumped the first base market in December and improved the rest of their roster in the process. First, at the Winter Meetings, they acquired corner infielder Jake Burger in a trade with the Miami Marlins, a move that gave us one of Michael Baumann’s best headlines: “Everything Is Burger in Texas.”
Burger’s addition made incumbent first baseman Nathaniel Lowe expendable; sure enough, a few weeks after the Burger trade, Texas sent Lowe to the Washington Nationals for left-handed reliever Robert Garcia.

Immediately after moving Lowe, the Rangers added some thump to their lineup with the signing of Joc Pederson to a two-year, $37 million deal with a mutual option for a third season. Altogether, the three moves essentially function as a two-for-one lineup swap, one that should provide more power to this offense, and also come with the bonus of fortifying their bullpen with a solid lefty who has yet to reach arbitration.

Texas was supposed to have one of the best lineups in baseball last season, with many of the same players returning from the group that won the World Series. But things didn’t go as planned, and the Rangers ended the season with a below-average offense (95 wRC+, 22nd in the majors). To be clear, Lowe was not the problem. His 121 wRC+ was the second-best mark on the team. But the Rangers lacked for power in their lineup, and two of the positions where they could get more slugging were first base and DH. With Burger and Pederson replacing Lowe and a DH committee that prominently featured Robbie Grossman and Travis Jankowski, Texas has maintained a similar offensive floor, but changed the shape of its lineup construction and production.

Pederson, a lefty slugger who plays almost exclusively against righties and didn’t wear a glove last year, is coming off the best offensive season of his career: 151 wRC+, .381 xwOBA, and .443 xwOBACON. He is a clear upgrade over Lowe and especially the 65 wRC+ that the Rangers got from their DHs last season. Another thing that’s worth mentioning: The Rangers play in the same division as the Seattle Mariners, with their elite rotation of five right-handers, and the Houston Astros, with a quartet of righties following ace lefty Framber Valdez. Yes, the two teams most likely to compete with the Rangers for the AL West title have just one left-handed pitcher between their two rotations. Pederson will get plenty of opportunities to do what he does best: Crush righties.

The Rangers especially struggled against the five Seattle starters last season, posting a mere .262 xwOBA, and if you want to go a bit more in-depth, they were even worse against pitches in the upper third of the zone from those five righties (.194 xwOBA). Those particular pitches, upper third from righties, were a major weakness for the Rangers last season, even when they weren’t facing the Mariners. Their .265 xwOBA against all upper-third pitches from righties ranked 23rd in baseball. Lowe specifically had a .225 xwOBA against such pitches, and only 20 hitters in all of baseball saw more of them than he did.

Pederson, meanwhile, absolutely torches those high pitches from righties. In 2024, he saw 170 pitches in the upper third of the zone from righties, and his .466 xwOBA against these pitches was eighth highest out of the 304 hitters who saw at least 100 right-handed pitches at that location. Basically, there aren’t many hitters who are better suited to help Texas’ struggles against Seattle’s strength than Pederson. I can’t say for sure this was the Rangers’ intention for signing Pederson and trading Lowe, but either way, they’re now better prepared to face Seattle and other quality right-handed pitchers.

Overall, though, Lowe is a good offensive player who represents a major upgrade for the Nationals. Last year, Washington first basemen combined for a 93 wRC+; during his four seasons with the Rangers, Lowe ran a 123 wRC+. His worst mark in that span? 114. Interestingly, that 114 wRC+ is exactly what Steamer projects for him in 2025, but even if he regresses to his Rangers floor, he should lengthen a lineup that features the strong young core of CJ Abrams, James Wood, and Dylan Crews, as well as the veteran switch-hitter Josh Bell, whom the Nationals signed to be their everyday DH.

Just to be sure about Lowe, though, let’s take a look under the hood to see what the data suggest about his performance over the last three seasons:

His approach and swing decisions saw a significant improvement by SEAGER after his career year in 2022, when he hit 27 home runs, recorded a 143 wRC+, finished with 3.1 WAR, and won a Silver Slugger. But along with that improvement came a decrease in contact quality. Then last year, Lowe saw trends in the wrong direction by both xwOBACON and SEAGER. That is a bit more worrying, but the drop in SEAGER didn’t have a negative impact on his BB%, which stayed nearly even with where it was in 2023. The greater concern is his continued slide in contact quality, and that’s worth paying attention to in his first year with Washington. Still, unless his production plunges dramatically — which seems unlikely even with the dips in contact quality and SEAGER — the Nationals surely will be satisfied.

Garcia is joining his third major league team just in time for this third major league season. On August 1, 2023, the Nationals selected him off waivers from the Marlins, for whom he appeared in just 1/3 of an inning, and in 31 2/3 innings with Washington over the final two months of that season, Garcia had a solid 3.69 ERA/3.44 FIP. He was even better last year, despite his 4.22 ERA, which doesn’t tell the full story of his season. In his 59 2/3 innings across 72 games, he ran a 2.38 FIP, 23.5 K-BB%, and 0.60 HR/9. As a lefty who relies primarily on his four-seamer/changeup combination, Garcia offers a different look out of the Rangers bullpen. Last year, he flourished with those two pitches, and the changeup allowed him to neutralize right-handed batters quite well. He gets chases, whiffs, strikeouts, and groundballs, and he doesn’t walk many batters. That’s the exact kind of pitcher any team should want. On top of that, he has five years of control left compared to Lowe’s two, which explains why this one-for-one swap made sense.

Lowe (and Bell) are smart additions for the Nationals, but they still have more work to do before they are ready to contend. Meanwhile, even with Garcia, the Rangers would probably like to add a veteran reliever with closing experience. Garcia has the talent to be a high-leverage reliever, but they shouldn’t rely on only him to lock down games. Still, the Rangers are much better off with Burger, Pederson, and Garcia than they were with Lowe and the three minor leaguers they traded to Miami. Overall, the Rangers have a deeper, more balanced group that they did a year ago. We’ll see if that’s enough to get them back to the postseason.