Rangers pull offseason stunner (again) with five-year, $185 million deal for Jacob deGrom
December 2, 2022
(AP photo/Corey Sipkin)
Jacob deGrom is a two-time Cy Young winner, routinely throws his fastball at 100 mph (or greater), and is considered by many as the best pitcher in baseball.
Based on the past two seasons, he also rates as one of the game’s most injury-prone pitchers.
He has made 26 starts the past two seasons, 38 over the past three when including the COVID season. He’ll turn 35 in June.
As of Friday night, deGrom will be paid an average $37 million a season through 2027 by the Texas Rangers, who once again set the free-agent market.
Everything is falling into place. I mean it’s going according to plan. The plan we’ve been told about for a couple of seasons now. We all read right here that the plan all along was to get marque position players in the ’21-’22 offseason. Even signing Seager, Semien & Gray, we were NOT expecting to be competitive in ’22. I think all of us reading/subscribed to Rangers Today know that we were going to be better than ’21 but we are not expecting to be competing for a playoff spot.
The ’22-’23 offseason was/is expected to be about pitching. Signing deGrom confirms that. Everything is still going as previously planned.
I guess Ray Davis woke up with a wild hair up his ass on August 15th & wanted some change. Not change the actual plan, that’s still playing out, but fire Woody & JD. Don’t get me wrong, I believe they made great moves hiring Bochy & CY has walked the walk since his promotion, but again, this has been the blueprint all along.
I’m as excited as I’ve been in several years. Even before the deGrom signing, we’ve made plans to drive out to a Spring Training game & make a family vacation out of it.
Looking forward to more news from Rangers Today
Ray isn’t getting any younger, and maybe he’s finally realizing that you can’t nickle and dime an MLB team. Should be a busy week at the winter meetings, and by busy I mean a lot of rumors to write about.
Thanks for the info, Jeff! Keep up the good work! Cant wait for the rumor mill to heat up even more. This time of year is always interesting to me.
It has a chance to be pretty wild. Stay tuned.
From best seasons to worst: 2 seasons with a sub 2 ERA and 175 or more innings pitched
1 season with an ERA around 2.5 and 130-150 IP
1 season with 100-120 IP and a 3 ERA
1 season he is mostly injured and pitches less than 50 innings with a 3.5-4 ERA
He may then trigger his vesting option and end up pitching the last season at 30 million I think based on the contract and get maybe a 2.75 ERA in 140 innings
Overall, I would take this. The first Cy Young award in Rangers’ history and getting to watch the pitcher version of A Rod