Next up for Texas Rangers is Opening Day. Their rebuild plan appears to be in place.
The final score will matter the next time the Texas Rangers play a game.
Opening Day for the 2021 regular season is Thursday at Kansas City. All the heavy lifting has been done. The roster is ready, though it won’t be official until a few hours before the season opener.
The Rangers finished their spring schedule Tuesday afternoon with a 6-3 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers at Globe Life Field. The team headed to the airport for the short flight to Kansas City, where they will spend their first off day since March 15 on Wednesday.
Rangers players are eager to get the season going, eager to prove the prognosticators wrong.
Rangers coaches and front-office members are ready to see how much work is truly left in the rebuild, to see if Joey Gallo can blossom and how much it will take to pay him to stay if he does, to see if Nate Lowe, Leody Taveras, Dane Dunning and others just as young and inexperienced are as promising as the Rangers hope.
They have 162 games — 102 more than last season — to find out.
“I’m really excited,” manager Chris Woodward said. “I think we accomplished a lot. Now, it’s real games.”
The players are excited to play, too. Heck, they were revved up to play Tuesday’s game that meant zilch. Veterans and regulars often will play only one of the two preseason exhibition games, like those against the Brewers, but not this time.
The lineup that took the field was largely the same one that played Monday and that will be on the field for the lid-lifter.
“I basically asked them, ‘Which one do you want to play, the day game or the night game?’” Woodward said. “They all said, ‘I want to play both.’ It’s a different mind-set, and I think it shows the hunger and desire these guys have to compete and go out and play.”
Hunger will only take a team so far, though.
The Rangers are going to be outmanned many games at multiple positions, but much of that is by design. Players who are inexperienced will play in order to develop and be less outmanned. Players acting as seat warmers will play until their replacements are added from the minors.
There are also players like Gallo and Opening Day starter Kyle Gibson, who endured their share of struggles in 2020 and are candidates to rebound.
Will they? Maybe. Maybe not.
Will the Rangers beat the Las Vegas over/under of 66.5 victories? Maybe. Maybe not.
Will the rebuild be moving in the right direction? That’s the key to this whole thing, and the Rangers say that is already happening.
They executed a plan over the offseason to add young talent, like Dunning, Lowe, catcher Jonah Heim and left fielder David Dahl.
The Opening Day roster will have seven homegrown players and eight more prospects acquired in trades or via the Rule 5 draft since 2018. Those numbers will grow as the season progresses, namely with the expected debut of 2019 first-round pick Josh Jung.
The Rangers cut ties with Rougned Odor, which could clear a path for 2020 first-rounder Justin Foscue to debut next season.
There is talk of a desire to retain Gallo long-term and to spend money on free agents as soon as next season.
It all sounds good even if the 2021 season probably won’t be.
“As a team, we’re confident in the young guys we have and we’re confident in the development they’ve made from last year to this year,” Gibson said. “We’re confident in some of the guys that have been here for a few years and feeling like we’re better prepared for this year and have gotten better over the offseason.
“We have a lot of young guys that are getting their first taste of the big leagues with fans in the stands, getting their first taste of a full season. I think that’s going to play into our advantage.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
This story was originally published March 30, 2021 at 3:50 PM.
