This time of year, every baseball publication publishes stories about the trade deadline. Who is going to be a buyer. Who is going to be a seller. Which team needs what. Which players are moving.
This year’s trade deadline has the added complication of knowing there probably won’t be a full season next year, or maybe even a season at all.
Complicating matters even further for the Rangers is that they don’t really have any prospects to deal. In fact, MLB.com pointed that out in their recent trade deadline prediction article about prospects each team has to deal in order to improve for a playoff run.
Their assessment:
“The Rangers really don’t have many left.
“This is assuming the Rangers don’t sell and big dogs such as Corey Seager, Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi remain
in Texas (though it would take a certifiable collapse for them to be on the trade block anyway). But dating back to the 2025 Trade Deadline, the Rangers have parted ways with a total of 11 prospects for Merrill Kelly, Danny Coulombe, Phil Maton and MacKenzie Gore. The farm system ranks in the bottom six, according to MLB Pipeline. They have a pair of Top 100 prospects in Sebastian Walcott (No. 10) and Caden Scarborough (No. 63), but the depth of the farm system likely won’t net them any major names as it did in 2023, when they acquired Aroldis Chapman, Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery.”
That’s the challenge the Rangers face. They have glaring holes everywhere—offense, rotation, bullpen—and not enough chips to fill them. It would take them sending Justin Foscue, Evan Carter, or Cam Cauley to get any significant piece. Jake Burger might be useful to a team needing power.
But the trade deadline is always a time when a team tries to fix the flaws they ignored in the offseason. Which always begs the question: why didn’t the address these weaknesses in the offseason when all it would have cost them was money, which they have in abundance, and not prospect, which they don’t?
Too bad they shipped five prospects for MacKenzie Gore. They could have used one or two at a time like this. Certainly more than they could use Gore.
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