Last winter, the Rangers tried the big blow on the mound by signing Jacob deGrom. It didn’t work out due to his Tommy John operation.
But the club signed the best free agent pitcher in an attempt to properly surround the club’s hitters.
Because even if it was difficult to predict that the Rangers were going to have such a big attack, we suspected that it was going to hit in droves.
And the hitters that had to be surrounded were Marcus Semien and Corey Seager.
Both guys were the big catches for Rangers the year of the lockout and let’s say after a tougher 2022, you had to see how the guys were going to bounce back.
Result? Admirably.
Semien (second baseman) and Seager (shortstop) form an extraordinary duo on the field, but also in the first two rows of the Rangers offensive lineup.
Although Seager has missed dozens of games due to injury, both guys have some of the best WAR of the American League. They are far from Shohei Ohtani… but everyone is.
With a WAR of 5.0 and 4.8, we can therefore say that if the two guys had been replaced by average players, the Rangers would have about 10 fewer victories on the clock.
That’s huge, 10 wins for two guys. But their stats are excellent:
- Semien is batting .282, OPS .825, 19 home runs and 78 RBIs in 121 games.
- Seager is batting .348, 1.072 OPS, 22 home runs and 73 RBIs in 78 games.
While Javier Baez is hated in Detroit, Trevor Story struggles to stay healthy and Carlos Correa doesn’t take off, the Rangers signed two great players two years ago.
Rangers are going to be good for quite a while yet.
