Friday Newsletter time: Texas Rangers say so long to 2021, move ahead (slowly) to 2022
The 102-loss season is in the books, and Corey Seager and Marcus Semien are on the payroll heading into next season.
The best day of the year for the Texas Rangers must have been Oct. 3. That was the first day of the offseason after they had just lost 102 games.
They couldn’t lose on the field again.
It turns out that the best days of their 2021 were ahead. Nearly two months later they were baseball’s biggest winners in free agency, signing four players within a 24-hour period Nov. 28-29 for $561.2 million.
Corey Seager at shortstop for $325 million. Marcus Semien at second base for $175 million. Not bad.
Just like that, 2022 and beyond, especially beyond, started to look a lot better.
The future can’t get here soon enough for the Rangers. The lockout that has frozen baseball business must be driving them nuts.
Maybe that’s just the Rangers’ usual luck.
The lockdown, though, won’t last forever. It shouldn’t have made it this far, but that’s the way negotiating goes, I guess.
Both sides know how bad this is for the sport, and there are so many players still unsigned that the sooner this ends the better. The union’s job is to make sure players play, and maybe that’s the leverage the owners are using.
Maybe they only need a two-week window, like the NBA or like MLB before the lockout started, to hammer out the rest of free agency. That would be fun. That would be good for baseball. Do it already.
It is possible that spring training is delayed, which wouldn’t be the worst thing ever. However, delaying the regular season and canceling games would be pretty awful for a sport that is already hemorrhaging fans.
So, let’s assume both sides are smart enough to do something about that. They weren’t smart enough in 2020 as they attempted to negotiate a season in the midst of the pre-vaccine pandemic.
OK, it’s a tough assumption to make, but it’s all we’ve got.
Once the season begins, things will be better on the field for the Rangers. It probably won’t be good enough for them to reach the playoffs, but it should be far easier to stomach on a daily basis.
Josh Jung should make his MLB debut. The same goes for Cole Winn. The rest of the farm system, led by Jack Leiter, will continue to develop.
There are many reasons for optimism, and that includes an improving big-league club.
Newsletter looking ahead, too
The Texas Rangers Newsletter hit its sixth-month anniversary last week and will enter 2022 with more than 1,000 readers. Substack defines readers as free and paid subscribers.
That number has exceeded my expectations, and so has the number of paid subscribers. More and more are signing up for full access (for only $5.99 a month or $60 a year), and the hope here is that more will go paid once the lockout is over and spring training begins.
Speaking of spring training, the Newsletter will be there for around three weeks, though not consecutively. A chunk at the beginning and a chunk at the end, when the big news usually comes down, ought to do it on our budget.
But with more paid subscribers comes more money in the budget. So, sign up today. And many thanks to those who gifted subscriptions for Christmas. I hope everyone is enjoying them.
There’s more to come.
Card(s) of the Week
For those who recall last week’s Card of the Week, yes, I did receive some cards for Christmas. No, I did not receive the 1960 Topps Mickey Mantle All-Star. If you have one, feel free to send it my way.
But my son was very excited to give me rookie cards of two of today’s brightest stars … who just happen to be two of his favorite players. The boy loves baseball, so I’ll let it slide.
Here they are: The 2019 Bowman Platinum Fernando Tatis Jr. rookie and the 2018 Panini Donruss Optic Rated Rookie.
While not my favorite players, I don’t dislike either of them. They are two of the most exciting players in a game that needs exciting players.
I do wish the Angels would make Ohtani available more frequently to the Japanese media who cover him. It’s a travesty that they don’t.
I can think of only one MLB player I don’t like, and he’ll remain nameless so that he doesn’t try to hunt me down and stab me.
He would, too.
Doggy video!
Here’s to making a splash in 2022. Enjoy. Happy New Year. Be safe. See you Monday.
