We looked at the position players in our last piece in the series. Today we will wrap up the 2022 opening day roster with pitching. Who will the Rangers run out to begin the season? Who will the ace be? How is the bullpen going to look? We take our best guess here.
Starting Rotation
There are a whole lot of internal names to choose from for this. The Rangers have a plethora of talent in the minors right now, especially on the pitching front. However, they are missing an ace after trading the past two Rangers aces in the past two seasons. Hot take: they won’t go out and get an ace this off-season. At least not on purpose. The big name on everyone’s mind is Clayton Kershaw. He is going to receive somewhere in the vicinity of a 3 year, 90 mm contract. History tells us the Rangers ownership will say no thanks to that size contract for the hometown boy.
Same story with all of the high dollar prospects. Don’t expect the Rangers to shell out big bucks for pitchers like Max Scherzer, Marcus Stroman, Kevin Gausman or Zach Greinke. I would more expect them to pay the 3-5 mm range for a guy that could be good again.
Ace of the Staff:
The ace of the staff is going to be Chris Archer. The Rangers will bring in the vet and hope that they can get some real value out of him. A career 3.87 ERA but he is having a down year due to injury. The exact kind of pitcher the Rangers like to take a chance on. I have seen no rumors at all tying Archer to the Rangers, this is just a gut feeling. It could just be bad Italian food.
The Rest of the Rotation
After Archer, the Rangers will most likely stay internal. Jordan Lyles and Mike Foltynewicz should be gone. This is in no particular order, this is just my guess at who the four will be. Kolby Allard, Dane Dunning, Taylor Hearn and Kohei Arihara. Rangers fans have kind of forgotten about Arihara, but he should be ready go in 2022. Allard has struggled of late, but I think the Rangers will want to continue looking at him in 2022. Same with Taylor Hearn. Dane Dunning is my lock. He will be there for sure. Other possibilities are Kyle Cody, A.J. Alexy, John King and Wes Benjamin. Should be interesting to see how wrong I am.
The Bullpen
Again, this is in no particular order. I see these guys being here for the start of the season in 2022. Dennis Santana, Brett Martin, Demarcus Evans, Jonathan Hernandez, Jose LeClerc, John King and Yerry Rodriguez.
Rodriguez was great at Frisco. The Rangers are going to want to give him a look. He is at Round Rock right now. The rest of the list is pretty straight forward in my opinion. I can and will be wrong on some of them. D-Train has been up and down all season. Other options are of course Jharel Cotton, Josh Sborz, Hunter Wood and Kyle Cody. Also there could be a free agent pickup that upsets my list as well.
Now there will be a lot more that make the club during the season. Most of Frisco will probably get to Arlington at some point. But for now, enjoy reading and picking apart my way to early predictions for the 2022 roster.
