SURPRISE, Ariz. — With the starting rotation in tatters, the Rangers on Tuesday took emergency steps to reinforce it. They signed a whole bunch of league leaders. They got the MLB leader in losses over the last four years. Added the league leader in hits allowed over that time period, too. And while they were at it, they picked up the guy with the highest WHIP, as well.
And they did it with expert efficiency: They got all that with one move.
Patrick Corbin even threw in the league’s highest post-COVID ERA as part of the deal.
For all the ugly numbers Corbin, 35, has accumulated over the last four years, one number stood out from the rest over that stretch. That number: 679. It’s his innings pitched total. Here he ranks in the same class as Gerrit Cole, who has just eight more. Pretty good bet now that Corbin will pass him. The Rangers desperately need innings at the moment.
Jon Gray is out until sometime in June, and that’s with a somewhat encouraging report about the state of his fractured right wrist. Cody Bradford probably isn’t an option until May; June if you want him back as a starter, which would be the Rangers’ preference. Jacob deGrom and Tyler Mahle are going to be on pitch limits all season, but especially stringent ones early in the year. Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker, the leading internal candidates to fill out the rotation, have combined for three total MLB outings of at least five innings and none longer than that.
Did we say desperately already?
“Circumstances have changed internally with our starting pitching and the depth,” President of Baseball Operations Chris Young said Tuesday. “We felt like signing Patrick Corbin was an opportunity to bring in somebody who has really been an innings stabilizer over the past 10-plus years. He’s a veteran player, a competitor and, by all accounts, just a winning personality who will fit into our clubhouse. It gives us some added protection.
We also believe that there’s some things we saw in the second half of last year with his performance that indicate if he can continue that trend, he can be a very serviceable major league starting pitcher, which we need right now.”
Corbin, who finished in the top 12 in the NL Cy Young Award voting in both 2018 and 2019, has struggled to perform for a while, with a 5.71 ERA, 63 losses and a 1.532 WHIP since 2021. But he’s taken a licking and kept on pitching.
For the Rangers, there is value alone in the innings. In a worst-case scenario, Corbin will stand out there every fifth day, take a licking and keep on pitching. That would help save the multi-inning relievers for more winnable games.
“There are games, it’s fair to say, when you’ve almost got to give up a game to save the bullpen,” manager Bruce Bochy allowed. “You say: ‘Hey, you’ve got the ball, you are staying out there. We don’t have help for you.’
“That guy can end up being one of the most valuable on the staff because he eats innings and saves everybody else.”
That’s not to say this is what the Rangers expect or are seeking from Corbin. Rather, it is to point out that, even if that’s all he does, there’s value in it.
But the Rangers believe there can be a bit more, too. If they can help him have a late-career renaissance like the one their own president of baseball operations experienced at the same age, well, then the one-year deal for less than $2 million in guaranteed money could be an absolute bargain. Young noted on Tuesday that his own career had taken on kind of a vagabond stage in his early 30s after a pair of injuries, but at age 35, he got healthy and enjoyed another nice run that netted him the Comeback Player of the Year Award in 2014 and his first World Series experience.
Young’s rebirth was due to health. Corbin has been healthy, but he changed his pitch repertoire last year, most notably adding a cutter to throw to right-handed hitters. He gained more confidence in it as the season progressed. It wasn’t great, but was usable. It helped make his slider more effective. The Rangers think there is something there to build on.
“He kind of changed his pitch usage,” Young said. “He started relying more on his cutter and slider to right-handed hitters. The results over the second half or the last 20 starts, maybe, were very positive. He’s been working on a changeup and really staying out of counts where he has to throw the fastball to right-handers. Our hope is we can make some improvements with that, continue the adjustments that he’s made, and get a pitcher who can help us win a lot of games.”
What goes unsaid here is that the move comes across as a hedge against Leiter and Rocker. While they could both get spots in the opening day rotation, when Corbin is ready, he’s going in. Which means, one of them is coming out.
That probably won’t happen until two turns through the rotation. Corbin has thrown 80 pitches of live BP in Florida, but hasn’t faced big league hitters, done fielding practice and hasn’t been seen by Bochy and Mike Maddux. And they won’t see him until next week. Corbin’s wife is due to give birth before the weekend, so the Rangers gave him permission to join them when the team returns to Arlington. If the late-spring signing of Michael Lorenzen last year is any guide, they’ll probably want him to make the equivalent of two tuneup starts.
On one hand, it could be read as a lack of confidence in Leiter and Rocker, who have had uneven springs. On another, it could be viewed as insurance to not put them into positions in which they might not succeed.
You can read it any way you want, but the bottom line is right now the Rangers simply need more arms. They’ll figure out how to best use them a bit later on.
“There is opportunity for both of them to make the team, whether it’s in the rotation or in long relief,” Young said. “One way or another, performance is going to dictate it, which is a great thing. There is opportunity for somebody to just take it and win a spot. We’ve got a lot to figure out in the next 10 days before opening day, but I can tell you, I like the quality of our arms. I just can’t tell you how it’s all going to come together.”
Tuesday was all about collecting the arms. The sorting will come later.
Twitter/X: @Evan_P_Grant
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