Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll start your baseball day with some news, notes and thoughts on the game we love.
For Friday’s column, I took the time to go through a long list of players who could be placed on an irrevocable waiver list and claimed before September 1, the deadline for playoff participation with their new teams.
The Rangers have been the most exciting team I’ve covered in this article, for the obvious reason that they are the defending World Series champions. Many players from last year’s club are still with them, although some of them are currently injured, and although Texas has struggled this season, the organization and its fans were hopeful that a rebound was not far away. However, the Rangers are simply running out of time. The trade deadline has passed and their playoff chances are less than 2%. The reality of their situation has led me to ask the following question: Could the team that just won the World Series become the Angels less than a year later?
Perhaps that assumption is a bit over the top. After all, the Angels are one of the most dysfunctional organizations in baseball, and the Rangers just won a championship. However, there are obvious parallels between the 2024 Rangers and last year’s Angels when it comes to how they approached the trade deadline. On the morning before this year’s deadline, the Rangers had a 12.0 percent chance of making the playoffs; at this point last season, the Angels’ chances were only a little better at 19.5 percent. Those uninspiring postseason probabilities didn’t stop either team from signing players, although they probably would have been better off trading away their players with expiring contracts. The Rangers signed Andrew Chafin and Carson Kelly, while last year’s Angels went all in and traded for Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo López, Randal Grichuk, CJ Cron and Dominic Leone. And both teams saw their chances increase after those trades. The Angels slumped to end the season on a losing streak for the ninth consecutive time, while the Rangers’ odds were at 1.6% before Monday’s game.
Last year, the Angels waived four of the five players they traded for — Giolito, Grichuk, Leone and López — as well as Matt Moore and Hunter Renfroe. Grichuk was the only one unclaimed. At that point, the Halos knew they weren’t going to make the playoffs, so they decided to see if they could get rid of some of their players with expiring contracts to get rid of the rest of their salaries. Before waiving the six players, the Angels expected to be quite a bit over the first luxury tax threshold, but after claiming the five, the team amazingly came under the tax threshold by just $30,000.
The Rangers could try to do the same, since they are in a similar situation. We currently estimate the Rangers’ CBT payroll to be just under $251 million, about $14 million over the tax line. Since the Rangers paid the luxury tax last season but not in 2022, any excess will be taxed at 30%, so $14 million becomes $18.2 million. Since their CBT payroll is under $257 million, they will not pay any additional excess, nor will their top draft pick be moved back 10 spots, as would have been the case had their payroll been at least $287 million.
The $14 million surplus is quite a lot to get off the books, but it’s not impossible if they act quickly. If they wait until close to the end of the month to place players on waivers, they likely won’t be able to cut enough salary to get under the threshold. The sooner the Rangers place players on waivers, the sooner those players can be claimed, taking them off Texas’ payroll sooner, which would reduce the team’s CBT payroll.
Here’s how much money would disappear from the books if the Rangers waived their players with expiring contracts and claimed those players on August 31st:
- Nathan Eovaldi: $2,650,538 (Eovaldi has a $20 million player option that becomes available after 36 more innings.)
- Max Scherzer: $2,078,853 (The Mets’ prorated amount of the $30,833,333 would be transferred to the new team; the Rangers are not allowed to keep him.)
- Andrew Heaney: $2,026,882
- David Robertson: $1,559,140
- Jose Leclerc: 974,462 USD
- Kirby Yates: $701,613
- Andrew Chafin: $662,634 (Chafin has a club option for 2025 for $6.5 million.)
- Carson Kelly: $545,699
- Jose Urena: $272,849
- Travis Jankowski: $265,054
- Robbie Grossman: $233,871
That’s just under $12 million, or $2 million less than the amount the Rangers would have to cut from the payroll. If all of those players were claimed on August 25 instead, the Rangers could cut $14.5 million off the books, enough to avoid the tax.
Complicating matters, though, is who would actually be claimed? Eovaldi and Scherzer would have to go for the CBT machinations to work, but both would come with injury concerns. Scherzer, who landed on the IL shortly after the deadline, is now being further evaluated for his fatigued shoulder, making that a potential minefield for his claim. Eovaldi left his last start with “side tightness,” which at least puts his next start in doubt; even if that keeps him out of the IL, it’s something that could reduce the likelihood of teams claiming him if he were available. And if the Rangers don’t know if teams would claim both pitchers, it probably wouldn’t be worth it for them to try to lower the salaries of their other players.
The Rangers were able to extend their TV deal with the controversial Diamond Sports Group (operator of Bally Sports), but only for one year, putting their broadcasts in 2025 in doubt. As we saw with the Padres, Diamondbacks and Rockies, MLB was willing to take over broadcasts for teams whose contracts with Diamond Sports expired, but these are direct packages that, according to Commissioner Rob Manfred, don’t generate as much revenue as deals with regional sports networks. While the league will now redistribute competitive equalization tax payments to teams that lose their TV contracts, it’s unclear whether the payments — capped at $15 million per team — will be enough to make up the difference. So you could argue that from a purely financial perspective, it would be wise for the Rangers to cut whatever salary they can, knowing there’s plenty of uncertainty for next season, but I don’t think they should do that.
Even if all the players stay just to appease fans and give them a better team to cheer for in the closing stages, that is not without value. Fans spend money and any drop in attendance would obviously impact the Rangers’ bottom line. It also wouldn’t bode well for fans or the remaining players if the Rangers gave up on this season, their title-defending campaign, if the only purpose of raising the white flag is to cut costs. (Yes, the pun was quite intended.) It would have been much easier to make a fire sale at the deadline than it is now; at least two weeks ago, the organization could have gotten players in return who could have contributed to a winning club in the near future. Of course, one could argue that the decision not to sell shouldn’t affect the Rangers now, that getting something, even a pay cut, is better than getting nothing at all. After all, the players the Rangers would be trading away now are pending free agents who may not be around next year anyway. But let’s consider what could happen if the Rangers were to give up some players and then try to re-sign them in the offseason.
Money is always a question, but it seems less likely that these players will want to return to a team that kicked them out for no reason, just because the organization simply didn’t want to pay them. Future free agents may also think twice about signing with the Rangers and choose not to go to a team that recently released its key players for financial reasons.
Ultimately, I tend to think this is more of a thought exercise than a significant probability: Rangers owner Ray Davis really likes to win, and as I’ve found, there isn’t the CBT incentive for them that there was for the Angels. The Angels were trying to end a playoff drought and quickly changed course. Meanwhile, the Rangers just won their first title and are aiming to compete for their second as soon as next year, and unlike the Angels, the Rangers have a legitimate shot at winning the 2025 World Series despite their struggles this season. Giving up rental players wouldn’t change that, and the potential morale downside might be too great to ignore. If the benefit is so minimal and the downside so unknown, why break it up? Just play the series out and reload for 2025.
