The Texas Rangers entered the offseason in dire need of pitching reinforcements, especially after the forgettable season that they had on the mound last year. Texas ranked at 22nd in team ERA (4.22), and it finished in a tie with the Kansas City Royals and the Cincinnati Reds for the 20th-most quality starts with 51.
Rangers general manager Chris Young went all out to revamp his team’s starting rotation in December. The Rangers came to terms with Jacob deGrom on a blockbuster five-year, $180 million deal. Young also bolstered the back end of Texas’ rotation with the additions of Andrew Heaney and Nathan Eovaldi.
Rangers first baseman Nathaniel Lowe had a front-row seat to watch Texas' rotation have its fair share of struggles in the 2022 campaign. After watching Young rejuvenate the Rangers' pitching staff in December, Lowe believes that the best is yet to come for the unit.
“Our top end is going to compete with every team in Major League Baseball, that’s an absolute fact,” Lowe said during a recent appearance on MLB Network Radio.
Lowe also sees that teams across the majors should not overlook the other starters who will round out Texas’ rotation.
“But I think that a detail that could get looked over is that there are still major league starters returning from last year and the year previous, who ate a lot of innings for us as we went through a lot of struggles,” Lowe said. “It takes a lot of guys on a starting staff to get through 162 games.
“And then you let your boys go again at the end, and then obviously, you know, through the playoffs, who knows what’s gonna happen. But there are a lot of pitchers on the top end and on the bottom end who are improving and who see these new guys come in and who will hopefully take that to heart and realize, ‘this is the level that my game needs to be at to be a major league starter.'”
The Rangers sure will be looking to clinch a spot in the postseason for the first time since the 2016 campaign.
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