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1. Contrary my original line of thought, yesterday Team President Jon Daniels said the Rangers will tender Leonys Martin a contract this winter. During the postseason, Leonys made news for refusing an assignment to continuing working at the team’s complex in Surprise, AZ, in case he would be needed in a later series. As it turns out, the move to tender a contract simply states that this is a business decision, and paying Martin ~$5 million is a cheap way to retain a guy who has proven to be valuable in the past. He will be 28 on Opening Day. 

2. By tomorrow, we’ll know whether or not Yovani Gallardo accepted his 1 year, $15.8 million qualifying offer. Jon Daniels maintains publicly that the club will try to bring back one of Gallardo or free agent RHP Colby Lewis, but based on the track record that no player has ever accepted the QO* — and that Yovani stands on the open market to sign for more money and more years than the Rangers are probably comfortable going — Colby seems far more realistic. 

3. Heading into today’s Arizona Fall League game, Jurickson Profar was hitting .260/.344/.500 (116 wRC+) with 2 HRs, and as many walks as he had strikeouts (8). These are all positive, if only brief, reminders of the type of talent Jurickson is — that he could essentially miss two full years of baseball action during such a critical stage of his development, and come out of the gates so strong. As Keith Law mentioned in a brief scouting report from seeing him: Profar’s body remains in excellent shape, and he looked fine when standing at shortstop in batting practice, handling grounders but just flipping them to other fielders rather than making regular throws to the first baseman. His bat speed is totally intact, and despite the injury to his right shoulder, his left-handed swing was unrestricted in BP and during the game. All four balls he put in play were hard-hit and came on fastballs 93 mph or above. 

4. Today the Braves traded away perhaps its most valuable position player, Andrelton Simmons, to the Angels for shortstop Erick Aybar, LHP Sean Newcomb, RHP Chris Ellis and about $3 million. This is an interesting move from both directions. The Braves are trying to retool to focus on Opening Day 2017 when its new ballpark opens, which makes me wonder why they would want to trade a star defender playing on a cheap 5-year, $53 million contract; the Angels, meanwhile, have holes they need to fill elsewhere, and chose to upgrade a position that wasn’t in dire need of one (like 3rd base, or left field, for instance). Out of an already dormant farm system, Anaheim shipped away its two-best pitching prospects.

*This morning while I began writing this, it was in fact that no player had ever accepted the qualifying offer. By about 4:30 PM Pacific Time, when I picked it back up to finish, that has changed. According to Ken Rosenthal, Astros outfielder Colby Rasmus will become the first in history to accept the one-year deal, and will be under contract with Houston for $15.8 million in 2016. 

Per John Blake, the Rangers have announced Anthony lapoce will be the team’s hitting coach, Brad Holman will be the bullpen coach, Justin Mashore the assistant hitting instructor, and Bobby Jones will hold the position of replay coordinator. 

Anthony lapoce is the lone unknown from the group, as Holman, Mashore and Jones are each internal promotions from Triple-A Round Rock. Here’s what Evan Grant writes of him:

Iapoce, 42, has spent the last three seasons as the Chicago Cubs’ Special Assistant to the General Manager/Player Development, overseeing that club’s minor league hitting program while contributing to additional projects for the organization.  Prior to joining the Cubs, he spent three seasons as Toronto’s roving hitting coordinator from 2010-12 after beginning his coaching career in the Marlins system from 2006-09.

It’s an interesting choice for hitting coach, as the Rangers decided on a voice that had some hand in developing the embarrassment of promising young position players in Chicago. With Joey Gallo, Nomar Mazara and Lewis Brinson each gunning for full-time roles as early as 2017, the hope is that lapoce will similarly aid in their transitions.

New York Mets RHP Matt Harvey and Texas Rangers DH Prince Fielder have been named Comeback Player of the Year for the respective leagues. 

Fielder’s strong first half carried him to a .305/.378/.463 (124 wRC+) slash line with 23 HRs in 2015, leading him to beat out the less popular Alex Rodriguez, who batted .250/.356/.486 (129 wRC+) with 33 HRs.

Per sources close to Evan Grant, the Texas Rangers and Doug Brocail’s agent are in the final stages of negotiating to make him the club’s next pitching coach. Brocail most recently worked in the same role for the Corpus Christi Hooks, Houston’s Double-A affiliate, and has spent time as a member of Houston’s front office and as pitching coach over the last six years. 

Reports also indicate that Brad Holman, formerly the pitching coach for Texas’s Triple-A affiliate, will be named bullpen coach. 

Yu Darvish has been on a throwing program since the middle of August, and if trickling information from the local beats is accurate, he should be returning to action in May or June of 2016. 

As is, the Rangers rotation figures to look something like this on Opening Day* (including raw Steamer Projections):

1. Cole Hamels (209 IP, 3.72 ERA, +3.6 WAR)

2. Derek Holland (171 IP, 4.01 ERA, +2.3 WAR)

3. Martín Perez (168 IP, 4.03 ERA, +2.3 WAR)

4. Colby Lewis (29 IP, 4.63 ERA)

5. Chi-Chi Gonzalez (59 IP, 4.69 ERA)

*This is, of course, operating within the assumption that the Rangers re-sign Colby Lewis, and there aren’t any significant injuries between now and then. 

Whenever Yu Darvish returns, Texas’s rotation should immediately ascend to a top-3 unit in the American League, depending on where Zack Greinke, David Price and Jordan Zimmerman eventually land this winter. (Hint: probably the NL.) 

It’s a sin that Yu has been on the shelf for so long, as August 9th, 2014 is still the last pitch he threw in a meaningful baseball game. By the time he makes his next appearance it will have been nearly two full calendar years, which sounds kind of dramatic now that it’s written in front of my face.

So yeah, a lot has changed. But not in the Josh Hamilton Is Back or The Rangers Are Good Again type of way; it’s more the realization that Darvish’s three years in Texas have felt so brief up to this point, and yet he is still only two seasons and maybe 55-60 starts from becoming a free agent. (Technically if Yu wins the Cy Young Award in 2016 he can opt out of the 6th year of his contract. But because he will likely miss 8-12 starts to begin the year, it almost certainly eliminates him from consideration.)

When he is on the mound, there isn’t much questioning what Darvish is capable of. He’s arguably one of the five-best pitchers in the game, or better. Between 2012-’14 he generated an insane 30.1% strikeout rate in route to registering +12.9 fWAR, in 545.1 IP. Perhaps more promising: his walk rate progressively dropped from 10.9% to 9.5% to 8.1% — each worse than league average, but improvement is improvement — leading many admirers to believe the best of Yu Darvish is still to come. 

Top K%, MLB (2012-2015)

1. Yu Darvish: 30.1%

2. Max Scherzer: 29.2%

3. Clayton Kershaw: 29%

4. Chris Sale: 28.3%

4. Stephen Strasberg: 28.3%

The Hardball Times published an article in March studying the historical success rates of pitchers returning from Tommy John surgery, noting: 

When assessing by the number of games entered post-surgery, the 12-16 month recovery window has shown to produce the best results. By considering post-surgery innings pitched, history has shown that pitchers returning after a slightly longer span, in the 14-20 month range, have out-pitched those returning slightly more quickly or further removed from the procedure.

This is relevant to Darvish since his recovery time puts him in line for a 14-15 month overlap between surgery and his first game back. It is, however, important to note that most pitchers don’t return to pre-injury form until roughly 24 months after surgery, so it will be a healthy exercise to temper expectations for Yu in 2016. 

If you remember back, a whole three months ago, to when the Rangers traded for Cole Hamels, it was ultimately with the intention of strengthening the club’s future. Not necessarily the present, as it worked out. I believe it’s reasonable to assume Jon Daniels wouldn’t have made the trade if Yu Darvish was healthy and pitching every 5th day in 2015, but then again the Rangers are a different team in a different place in the standings if that’s the case, and the whole damn spacetime continuum is changed. So who the hell knows. 

Until the next crop of Ranger prospects (Mazara/Gallo/Brinson) graduates to the major leagues — which figures to be 2017 — the roster is mainly comprised of late-prime/post-prime veterans, so there is a ton of incentive for the front office to go for it the next two years, with both Hamels and Darvish sharing 40% of the rotation duties. I don’t see everything in terms of a team being “all-in” or “in a complete rebuild,” but if those were the two endpoints in the spectrum, the Rangers would clearly be closer to the former.

For Yu Darvish, what’s most important is his health, and that he doesn’t experience any significant setbacks leading up to his expected arrival in Arlington.