The Texas Rangers have moved on from Leody Taveras and bought themselves a little more wiggle room under the CBT line
Leody Taveras is no longer a member of the Texas Rangers, having been claimed on waivers by the Seattle Mariners on Tuesday.
This ends the saga of a player who was, prior to being claimed by the Mariners, the longest tenured player on the team (in terms of time in the organization), someone who spent a lot of time atop the Texas Rangers’ prospect lists, made it to the big leagues at a young age, but never could have the sort of sustained success that we all hoped for from him.
In some ways the Leody Taveras experience has been similar to what we experienced with Martin Perez, who was signed eight years before Taveras was, showed up on top 100 lists, was consistently one of the youngest players in the leagues he played on, but struggled to meet expectations. Perez was better than as a Ranger than Taveras was, spent more time with the team, but had a similar disappointing final stretch with the team that ended with an ignomious departure.
Like Perez, Leody Taveras was someone who I felt oftentimes got a bad rap from Rangers fans, and was someone I felt that the Rangers should be patient with. Like Perez, Leody had value at times for Texas, but couldn’t sustain that, and even at his best wasn’t as good as it was thought he could be. Like Perez, Leody was criticized as a headcase who couldn’t get the most of his abilities — in Perez’s case, it was a tendency to melt down too often when he got into trouble, while with Leody, it was a perceived lack of focus that resulted in basic mistakes being made.
I thought Leody had turned a corner with his solid 2023 campaign, and while he was disappointing in 2024, I felt he was young enough (2024 was his age 25 season) and talented enough to bounce back and have a quality season in 2025. That has not been the case so far.
I know most fans were ready to move on from Leody, had tired of his inconsistency and his defense, and sporting a 601 OPS and an xwOBA that suggested that he was lucky to have an OPS that was even that good, he certainly had not played well enough to keep a strong hold on a roster spot. The Rangers, who reportedly had tried to trade Taveras and get something in return the week prior to putting him on waivers, may well have gotten to the point that they were done with him, too, were tired of looking at him and simply wanted someone else there.
I tend to think, however, that shedding Taveras’s salary was the primary (though not necessarily only) motivation for this move. Taveras is making $4.75 million in 2025, and the Seattle Mariners claiming him means that they are on the hook for the roughly $3.7 million remaining due to him. The Rangers, as we have discussed ad nauseum, are close to the first Competitive Balance Tax threshold, and it has been made clear through both reporting and actions this past offseason that the team wants to stay under that threshold this year, in order to result the tax amount, which would be 50% in 2025 (and 2026) if they exceeded it again, but would drop down to 20% in 2026 if they stay under the line in 2025.
The Rangers are expecting to be (and maybe “hoping to be” would be the better phrase at this point) buyers at the deadline. Cots has the Rangers currently (post-Leody departure) at $8.7 million under the first tax payer line, though several players have incentive bonuses that are makeable, notably Tyler Mahle, who has up to $5 million in incentives available to him this year based on innings pitched. I don’t know the specifics of Mahle’s incentives, but he’s blowing and going right now, and it isn’t unreasonable to believe that he will hit most, if not all, of those.
As things stand right now, the Rangers would seem to want to be adding a bat or two. Maybe they’ll want to add a bullpen arm. Hopefully the rotation will be solid enough that a starting pitcher isn’t necessary, but that’s always a possibility. Pre-Taveras departure, the amount of room they had available was slight, and other than giving up a prospect or two to get someone to take Jon Gray and his salary off their hands (which presupposes that the rotation is solid enough and healthy enough that they could afford to part with Gray), the available options to shed enough salary to make a difference in being able to add someone while staying under the CBT threshold negligible.
And adding a bat would most likely mean adding a few million dollars in salary, even if the move is made at the end of July when just a third of the player’s 2025 salary would go on the Rangers’ books. I mean, sure, there are a few cheap options out there — maybe the Rangers are buying in on Kyle Stowers having figured it out this year, and would look to swing another deal for a Marlins hitter making league minimum — but those guys are going to be more costly in terms of prospects than a rental would be (and yes, they’d also have more long-term value, I know that, don’t rush to the comments to point that out). And you can always seek to have the selling team pick up the remaining salary for the player you are acquiring, but again, that’s going to be more costly in terms of talent given up.
But now? Well, you’ve got more flexibility. For example, we all hope that Jake Burger gets it going in AAA and returns to the majors soon and is a functional major league first baseman. But if he’s not — or if he’s performing more like a short-side platoon guy to pair with Joc Pederson — well, Nathaniel Lowe is hitting .255/.340/.433 with a 120 OPS+ this season, and at the trade deadline would be owed just $3 million or so for the rest of the year. Moving Leody and his contract now would potentially allow you to slide Lowe — or someone similar, with a similar 2025 salary — in come July at his price point.
What would have happened if Leody hadn’t been claimed. To borrow a phrase from Corey Seager, I guess we’ll never know. But at this point I kind of think he would have ended up not being sent down. On Monday, when Chris Young said that Evan Carter was joining the team in Boston, what the corresponding move would be wasn’t announced, though Evan Grant called it “likely” that he would take Leody Taveras’s spot.
We now know, though, that Kevin Pillar had been dealing with a back issue for the previous week, and ended up getting put on the injured list on Wednesday. The Rangers aren’t rife with quality outfielders right now anyway, with Pillar slashing .237/.237/.289 so far this season and Dustin Harris slashing .200/.263/.343. The only player on the 40 man roster in the minors who can play the outfield is Jonathan Ornelas, who is more of an infielder. Other than Ornelas, your only real outfield option at AAA is Sam Haggerty, who has played more infield in his career than outfield.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the game plan was for Carter to be in Boston on Tuesday to be activated if Taveras was claimed, and if he went unclaimed, go ahead and put Pillar on the i.l. and keep Taveras on the active roster, with an eye towards running him through waivers again when Pillar was ready to be activated (assuming no one else got hurt in the meantime).
All that is moot now, though. Taveras is a Mariner, the Rangers have more wiggle room to add salary at the deadline, and the team is going to have to hope that the outfielders currently here can stay healthy and keep hitting (in Langford’s case) or start hitting (in everyone else’s case).