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Adrian Beltre, who turns 37 next month, wants a new contract.

Whether it was in good faith or obvious obviousness, the Texas Rangers picked up his $16 million vesting option on February 25th, 2015, a month and change before the start of last season and a few months before Beltre tore a ligament in his thumb. Even then, the future Hall-of-Fame 3rd baseman squeezed out another 5-Win season, helping the Rangers capture their 3rd AL West crown in 6 years.

That’s why picking up Adrian’s 2016 option before it was necessary was such a no brainer in the first place. Between 2011-2015 — Adrian Beltre’s first five years in Texas — he generated +27.3 fWAR, which trails only Mike Trout (+38.5), Andrew McCutchen (+33.4) and Miguel Cabrera (+29.9) in FanGraphs WAR over that span. If we price each Win, conservatively, as being worth $5.5 million, then Beltre produced a whopping $150 million worth of value ($30 million/year) while being paid an average of $16 million annually. Already the Rangers have made an insane amount of surplus value on Beltre’s 6-year, $90 million contract.

Yet, he is now reportedly seeking a 3-year, $60 million extension, which would cover his age 38-40 seasons — where even baseball’s greats succumb to gravity, and natural decline.

So this brings us to the great question: Knowing Texas did so well on his original contract, getting roughly double the production it paid for, is that justification enough to bite the bullet and pay for his decline years?

My immediate inclination is no, it isn’t worth it. But it’s also true that my immediate inclinations are based almost exclusively on the exact opposite of how I feel emotionally. Because if I’m being honest, I love watching Adrian Beltre play baseball for the Rangers. I, as I can only assume most of you as well, want him to retire as a Ranger.

However, emotional responses don’t generally make for the best business decisions. And baseball is big business.

Beltre is lauded by his manager and teammates and the media at large as being a great leader. While I rarely prescribe to the idea that leadership has any inherent value whatsoever — because it’s intangible and unquantifiable — for the Rangers, and Adrian Beltre specifically, I do think it holds some value.

This is rich coming from a Texas Rangers blogger, that leadership means nothing unless it’s one of my guys. Which is fair. But I was also, perhaps unjustly, part of a population of Rangers fans that thought Michael Young was the most overrated player in franchise history. His brand of “leadership” was part of a media narrative, as his skills eroded so much over the last few years of his career that without leadership, there were a precious few things that Young could actually be described as doing well on a baseball field.

Meanwhile, Adrian Beltre is old, but he can still rely on performance to set the standard. He’s especially important to the Rangers, who’ve invested heavily in Latin America over the last decade. There are a disproportionately large number of Spanish-first players suiting up for Texas, and it’s meaningful for the Rangers to have a been there, done that, veteran teammate to help all the young talent with the transition into MLB.

There’s also the issue of the Rangers depth moving forward. Elvis Andrus and Prince Fielder are signed longterm, Rougned Odor won’t be a free agent until after the 2020 season, and given a little fortune with health, Jurickson Profar and Joey Gallo could be ready for regular service as early as this summer.

Tentatively, it’s reasonable to assume that Beltre, Andrus, Odor and Moreland will cover the infield assignments to start 2016, with Fielder as the DH and Profar and Gallo at Triple-A. What Texas plans on doing with Profar, Gallo and Beltre will be fascinating to watch over the next 12 months. 

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that Adrian Beltre is looked at as a constant, almost indispensable piece of the Rangers puzzle. In spite of the fact that the better business model consists of paying Gallo the league minimum to play 3B in 2017, internally I’m guessing the Rangers don’t want to revisit the mistake it made with Michael Young in 2013. Even with all the amazing advances baseball has made with Sabermetrics, exposing market inefficiencies, there are still pockets of hidden value out there. And it won’t terribly surprise me if the Rangers travel the path of least resistance for the greater good of the clubhouse.

Which is something I never thought I would be OK with advocating. 

With nearly everything I’ve written over the last half-decade, I have attempted to justify my points using basic math in the WAR/$ paradigm. And to a large degree it’s been a worthwhile undertaking given the numbers-friendly sensibilities of the Rangers front office. 

Here, however, I find myself devolving back into the stone age. The words to describe Adrian Beltre as a smart business decision moving forward are outweighed almost in totality by the inescapable forces of age and decline, and is he really going to be worth $20 million a year?

I’m not convinced, which isn’t the same as saying I wouldn’t do the damn thing, anyway. Beltre has been one of the best players in MLB over his last five years in Texas. And although you will rarely see me standing on that as reasoning for paying a player beyond, I do believe some nuance is required in this specific case. 

It’s not necessarily news, but it’s something that’s been talked about here before, and Ken Rosenthal is once again reporting that the Rangers still have interest in catcher Jonathan Lucroy.

Sources: #Rangers remain interested in #Brewers‘ Lucroy, but no recent talks. #Astros, #Athletics were among other clubs interested earlier.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) March 14, 2016

As I’ve mentioned recently, I don’t think a deal will happen anytime soon. The Brewers are obviously going to set any asking price on the assumption that Lucroy will be closer to the 6.1 WAR player he was in 2014 than the 1.1 WAR player he was in 2015.

For the Rangers, Robinson Chirinos has quietly turned into a solid catcher. He’s been worth 3.8 WAR over the last two seasons in 171 games, and has shown himself to have a strong arm for catching would-be base stealers.

Both Lucroy and Chirinos dealt with injuries in 2015, so there’s a bit of speculation that is involved in deciding which player could be more valuable in 2016. For me, I’d venture to guess that Lucroy would be at least a small upgrade over Chirinos, but for the cost it would take for Texas to get him right now, it’s a bit unrealistic.

Of course, “remaining interested” and “in talks” are two totally separate ideas, and it appears that at least based on Rosenthal’s tweet that we’re a bit closer to the former than the latter.

Should Lucroy be on the trading block at the trade deadline in the midst of a solid season, this could all change, particularly if Texas is a move or two away from being over-the-top in the AL West. Until then, I can’t imagine that any deal would make a ton of sense for Texas.

One of the marks of Spring Training — and the related anticipation of the new season beginning — is the constant chatter that comes with each Spring Training game.

As fans, we love to see what our favorite prospects are doing against fringe and Major League level pitching. You either love to see Joey Gallo‘s monstrous home runs, or you’re lying.

Beyond that, we end up overanalyzing the small sample sizes that come with these games. Just because Nomar Mazara has an OPS over 1.000 doesn’t mean he’s ready to break camp with the Rangers. No, Prince Fielder hasn’t morphed into the second coming of 2013 Lance Berkman. And for that matter, what do we really know about Delino DeShields?

DeShields, a Rule 5 pick by Texas in 2015, ended up playing significant time for Texas and earning leadoff duties before all was said and done. His raw speed confounded even Troy Tulowitzski in the playoffs on an infield single that Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs had timed at 3.7 seconds from contact to first base.

As Sullivan also pointed out, for perspective, 4.0 for a right-handed and 3.9 for a left-hander are considered an “8” on the scouting scale, which would place him in the top echelon of speedsters in the history of baseball.

Knowing that, it’s no wonder that DeShields has run his way into the hearts of many Rangers fans. We all love when our players show things like “hustle” and “grit”, so when we see a player go all-out to make the run to first base, it’s imprinted on our minds more than, say, a player who hits a single to left field and is able to briskly jog to the base.

Getting back to the matter at hand, Texas has shown that, at least for the time being, they’re plenty happy with DeShields being their starting CF. Leonys Martin was sent to Seattle in the offseason, and the front office reportedly refused to get a deal done with Austin Jackson because he wanted to play CF.

So where does that leave us? We know this: DeShields posted a .718 OPS in 2015 in 492 plate appearances. His wOBA was .317, or just above the 2015 league-average of .313. He can steal bases, and he’s going to manage to get on base with his fair share of walks.

However, there is one major area that DeShields could afford to improve on: Making contact. Growing up playing little league, one of the most inaccurate statements almost universally made by coaches was “a walk is as good as a hit”. On the surface, that may sound like great advice. And no one is knocking walks, if that’s what the pitcher ends up giving. However, you’re likely not going to see a walk advancing a baserunner from first to third, or keeping the double play out of the realm of possibilities by moving a runner from second to third.

So we know that. And we know that Delino DeShields hasn’t been a high-contact player either in his brief Major League career or in the minor leagues. Truth be told, DeShields needs to improve a bit on his .344 OBP as the leadoff hitter. His walk rate of 10.8% is actually considered above average, so you’d like that to at least stay where it is. That leaves making more contact as his option for increasing his OBP.

To his credit, DeShields says he has the goal of reaching base 200 times and scoring 100 runs. That would seem to be a great goal to have, but to make it happen, he’ll need to put the bat on the ball a bit more. With his speed, even light contact could result in more singles than the average hitter.

Beyond his offensive skill set, the other direction I wanted to go with this is the future of DeShields in Texas. More specifically, does he have one beyond 2016? To be sure, he needs to improve a bit in the outfield, which is something that we’ll hopefully see in the converted infielder in his second season. However, we know that Nomar Mazara and Lewis Brinson are both players that Texas is very high on. Brinson, for his part, profiles as a CF, which would likely slide DeShields over to LF. And who knows if Ian Desmond is in Texas longer than a year anyway?

After that, however, Mazara profiles as a corner outfielder, and with Shin-Soo Choo in RF, that leaves DeShields without a position. Barring the Rangers trading Choo, he’s not going anywhere; he’s got the contract to prove it. So is DeShields the fourth outfielder?

Much of that could hinge on exactly what Josh Hamilton is able to do — if anything — in 2016. Hamilton will be under contract through 2017, and the Angels are paying for most of his contract. There may come a time when Texas has to decide whether Hamilton or DeShields provide more value for the ball club in 2017.

At the end of the day, this is a good problem for Texas to have: A surplus of outfield talent that allows them to select the best man for the job. With that said, the organization seems to be high on both Mazara and Brinson — and rightly so — and barring a trade of Choo and his high-dollar contract, you’d figure that those three would be the starting outfield as soon as 2017. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out where that might leave Delino DeShields. He could become the leadoff hitter the Rangers would love to keep in that position, but more likely, I could see him being the fourth outfielder, or even on another team by the beginning of 2017.

I believe this is all that needs to be put here for tonight:

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