March 31st, 2020
Andrew Dewhirst
In these trying times, I have fallen into the virtual trap of taking over the management of a virtual MLB team, in this case, the 2020 Texas Rangers. This means I control the roster, ticket prices, lineups, and the pitching staff. This simulation is being run with an OOTP Sim and 29 other like-minded individuals in the fantasy baseball industry who have each taken over a team. If you don’t know me, I am not a Texas Rangers fan by normal standards, I’m not certain I have ever thought enough of the Rangers to ever seek them out even on MLB.TV, however here I am today, trying to figure out their path forward and understand what exactly Jon Daniel’s plan is so that I can hopefully turn this organization into a virtual juggernaut for years to come. What I hope to do in this article, and those that will surely follow it outline what my current understanding of the team’s direction is, and then how the team is performing on a series by series basis.
The first thing I wanted to do with the Rangers was understand the current direction of the team. The Rangers have a portion of their roster that is rapidly aging which leaves me initially thinkings that they should be primed for a rebuild, however, given the team chose to add payroll in the offseason and trade away younger assets that doesn’t seem to be the immediate plan. When you look under the hood a little closer what you actually find is a team that instead of shrinking their payroll as they open a new stadium that has chosen to roll the dice on some assets that are movable should things fail. Meaning, while they could have chosen to tank, and build their team that way, the team decided that they will try to compete and see if the young players on their roster(Calhoun, Gallo, Solak) can take a step forward and make a run at the wild card with an otherwise veteran club that has a lot of movable pieces to further stock the farm system should they not play well.
To start putting my stamp on this club, which is difficult given the date the simulation started was March 25th(budgets and rosters are mostly set), I moved Rougned Odor to the Giants in exchange for Tony Watson and Wilmer Flores. Why this move? A few reasons;
- The Rangers bullpen at this time appears to be a weakness, so adding a known quantity in Watson should help hold late leads.
- Odor, while having nice power and speed, hurts you more than he helps you. His hit tool is below average, and he doesn’t play great defense. On top of that his escalating salary isn’t helpful if the Rangers are going to have any hope of adding anything down the stretch to make a playoff run. This deal frees up 3 million this year alone.
- Flores’ flexibility and ability to hit lefties makes him an ideal platoon partner with Ronald Guzman at first, who is easily the weakest hitter in the Rangers lineup.
There will be more moves to come as the season progresses, and injuries occur, so stay tuned, I will be back with how things have gone through week 1 with the Rangers and every week after that until we have some non-virtual baseball to talk about.
If you have questions or observations you can leave a comment or find me on Twitter @andrewkdewhirst.
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