Rangers could add more left-field options soon — let’s figure out why

The Rangers’ winter-long left-field mystery might be on the verge of a solution. Or perhaps, more accurately, a series of partial solutions they hope will congeal into a solution for now while the other potential long-term solutions finish ripening in the minor leagues.

According to a source, the Rangers are in contact with free-agent outfielders Robbie Grossman and Ben Gamel. Whether either addition would make much sense depends entirely on which of those guys — or both, or neither — ends up in camp and what the expectations would be for each. Let’s run through a few scenarios.

Rangers sign Grossman

This isn’t a difficult puzzle piece to work out. Grossman hit .320/.436/.443 (.879 OPS) against left-handed pitchers last year (compared to .163/.253/.256 (.509) against right-handers). Hold that up to the light and the edges start to look like a reasonable fit with a few of the other candidates for playing time in left field. Here’s a chart:

With the lone exception of Ezequiel Durán — who might need a little more seasoning on defense anyway, as he has been an infielder his entire career — every one of those guys hits right-handed pitching better than left-handed. Not included: Joe McCarthy, since he has only 10 big-league at-bats. But in the minor leagues in 2021 (he played in Japan in 2022), McCarthy slots right in alongside the rest of these guys, having hit .283/.362/.483 (.845 OPS) against left-handers and .312/.390/.558 (.948) against their right-handed counterparts.

Pick your potential platoon partner poison, but if the price for Bryan Reynolds is too steep and McCarthy can’t replicate his previous success and make the team, Grossman makes a lot of sense as a platoon partner in left field.

Rangers sign Gamel

The only way I can make sense of this one is if the Rangers believe a combination of these three things:

• Bubba Thompson, Josh Smith, Durán and McCarthy aren’t quite ready for the big leagues and would benefit from more time in Triple-A Round Rock.

• Mathias holds more value as a super-utility player, able to spell players anywhere in the infield, plus left and right field.

• They don’t have a ton of confidence that Travis Jankowski or Clint Frazier will perform well enough to produce at the big-league level.

If the front office believes all three of these things, it might make sense to bring in Gamel and put him in a three-way competition with Jankowski and Frazier in hopes that one of them heats up this spring and wins the job outright. It’s also possible the Rangers believe these things so strongly that they sign both outfielders, allowing Gamel to compete with the others for the duty of platooning with Grossman.

Bryan Reynolds (Charles LeClaire / USA Today)

Shouldn’t ‘trade for Reynolds’ be one of the options?

That would certainly solve a lot of the problems and, ideally, put an end to the eternal left-field carousel in Arlington. But it doesn’t appear the Pirates have budged off their heavy asking price for Reynolds. The Rangers have worked hard to bolster their minor-league depth, and general manager and president of baseball operations Chris Young has mentioned on occasion the team’s strategy isn’t simply an “all-in” chip shove to try to win a World Series this year. Rather, the hope is that the minor-league depth will lead to a more sustainable and long-term era of success.

Paying an exorbitant price for one player could put a dent in that. That’s not to say they won’t ever do it, but the fact it hasn’t happened yet means — at least so far — they haven’t found the right fit for the right price.

Plus, why deplete the farm system for one guy when they’re not one guy away from the World Series? Here’s a list of questions the team still has to answer this season: Is Leody Taveras going to live up to his potential in center field? Is Josh Jung going to succeed in the big leagues at third base? Can Nathaniel Lowe repeat his Silver Slugger performance from 2022? Is there more in the tank for Adolis García in his third full big-league season? Who’s going to be in the bullpen? And, of course, will their rotation stay healthy enough to provide the sort of value the team is counting on?

That’s to say nothing of the next wave of questions, many of which involve names like Jack Leiter, Kumar Rocker, Owen White, Justin Foscue, Aaron Zavala, Dustin Harris and a slew of others who aren’t quite ready for the big leagues just yet.

If the Rangers had a guy in the minor leagues they thought might be capable of performing to the same level as Reynolds in a couple of years — when they do plan to be contending for a World Series — then why not hold off, take the marginal gains this year and see how things shake out?

They do, by the way, have a guy in the minor leagues they think that highly of: Evan Carter, who just landed at No. 1 on Jamey Newberg’s Top 72 Rangers prospects list and Keith Law’s Top 20 Rangers prospects list.

Carter is almost certainly not going to be ready for the big leagues this year, having been promoted to Double-A Frisco just late enough last year to log a mere 21 at-bats at the level. But the 20-year-old outfielder has all the tools to look promising come late 2024 and early 2025. If he can do so alongside a few of his teammates who weren’t traded for Reynolds this spring, maybe that helps the “sustainable” part of the Rangers’ “sustainable success” goal come to fruition.

Why haven’t you mentioned Jurickson Profar?

For a lot of the same reasons I just listed above. Jurickson Profar is almost certainly looking for a multiyear deal, whereas the Rangers are probably looking for a one- to two-year solution. Signing Profar now would immediately improve the team, sure. But unless it would improve the team enough to be the difference between October baseball and October vacation, I’m not sure it’s the move that best fits the timeline, since he’d still be around in 2026 and possibly even longer than that.

Profar is a lower-risk possibility than Reynolds because it would cost them only money and not prospects. But until we know what Profar’s asking price is — and we don’t yet — it’s hard to determine whether it would be worth keeping him around longer than they would need him for.

This is all, of course, assuming Taveras spends 2023 becoming the everyday center fielder the team has hoped he’d become. Young says he didn’t let the late-season slump dampen his hopes for the outfielder — the entire body of work in 2022 was impressive, before and immediately after his June call-up. If Taveras flames out, perhaps the Rangers will wish they would have paid the price for Reynolds or Profar, allowing them to put Carter in center field when he arrives.

But if Taveras doesn’t pan out and Carter is the answer in center field, more left-field options are always on the horizon, including several names mentioned here, future free-agent classes or via trade — whether that be for Reynolds or someone else.

— The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal contributed to this report.

(Top photo of Robbie Grossman: Dale Zanine / USA Today)