With the 2025 Texas Rangers season having come to an end, we shall be, over the course of the offseason, taking a look at every player who appeared in a major league game for the Texas Rangers in 2025.
Today we are looking at first baseman Rowdy Tellez.
If the Texas Rangers had made the playoffs, Rowdy Tellez would have been a fun story for 2025.
I mean, he was kind of a fun story anyway, even with the Rangers not making the playoffs. He was signed to a minor league deal in early July after the Mariners
released him in late June, played a few games for Round Rock, was summoned to join the big league team at the All Star Break due to Jake Burger’s injury, and was a productive platoon first baseman in the second half of the season.
And he truly was a platoon guy with Texas. He only had 10 plate appearances against lefties in his time with Texas. He struck out four times, walked three times and had no hits, giving him a .000/.300/.000 slash line against southpaws, which is kind of fun.
Tellez put up a total slash line of .259/.315/.457 in 127 plate appearances for the Rangers in 50 games, good for a 124 OPS+ and a 115 wRC+. We can skip the argument about why the big difference and which of those numbers is more accurate. Either way, we’ll take that for a guy signed to a minor league deal mid-season.
He even pitched in a game! A memorable game, at that, a 14-2 loss to the Blue Jays on August 16, the 8th loss in 9 games for your Texas Rangers. That wasn’t the nadir of the season — the nadir was August 21, when the Rangers lost 6-3 to Kansas City, a game that resulted in the Rangers falling to three games under .500 as well as losing both Marcus Semien and Evan Carter for the season. But it was part of the stretch where the team seemed to hit rock bottom.
Was Rock Bottom a character in the Flintstones? If not, it should have been.
But yeah, Tellez came into the game in the seventh inning with the Rangers down 11-1 and ended up giving up a three run homer to Davis Schneider. He pitched a scoreless 8th, giving Tellez a 13.50 ERA for the season. Tellez has now, in his career, thrown 5.2 innings over five appearances, allowing five runs, so he has a career 7.94 ERA.
Tellez has also hit three of the 30 batters he has faced in his career. He’s a headhunter! You better not dig in at the plate when you’re facing Rowdy Tellez!
And of course he’s big and has a beard and gives off a slow pitch softball stud vibe. He kind of looked, to me, like the old picture of Dadboner that the Dadboner account used to use:
That is the Dadboner picture, btw, not Rowdy Tellez in his civvies. I understand if you were confused by that.
Anyway, Tellez is currently a free agent. A return to Texas seems unlikely, since the Rangers need either a righthanded hitter to platoon with Joc Pederson, or a good enough first baseman to play first every day and make Jake Burger the platoon partner for Pederson. Sadly, Rowdy doesn’t fit either category.
Rowdy is going to be playing for Mexico in the World Baseball Classic this year, though, so you can root for thim there.
In case you are curious, Rowdy Tellez has the eighth most home runs in MLB history for a player listed at 270 lbs. or more. Adam Dunn, Aaron Judge, Carlos Lee, and Prince Fielder are the top four. All of them have more than 300 home runs.
And I bet you are surprised Adam Dunn has more career home runs than Aaron Judge. He leads him by a lot — 462 to 368. That’s because Judge either hits 50+ homers in a season or less than 40 in a season. Also, Judge didn’t get to the majors full time until his age 25 season. Judge turns 34 this year, and has led the majors in position player bWAR in three of the past four seasons. Aaron Judge is breaking the aging curve.
Rowdy has 122 homers in his career — he passed Jesus Aguilar last year. The three guys between Rowdy and Fielder are Evan Gattis (139 homers), Miguel Sano (164), and Dmitri Young (171). Tellez hit 17 homers in 2025, so catching Gattis would seem to be doable, assuming he latches on somewhere and sticks around for a couple of seasons. Sano and Young would be harder, and likely would require a career resurgence from him.
The nickname “Rowdy” amuses me. A grown man being named “Rowdy” is funny to me. Especially when he looks like Rowdy Tellez does. The only other real person who actually goes by Rowdy (as compared to having it appended to his actual name, like Rowdy Roddy Piper) is former Olympic swimmer Rowdy Gaines, who won three gold medals in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and now is a commentator for swimming events.
Rowdy Gaines’ actual government name is Ambrose Gaines IV, and so yeah, I can see opting for “Rowdy” instead. The problem with being a IV is that there’s no good inherent nickname that goes with it. If you are a Junior, well, you go by Junior. Your birth name is Joey JoJo Junior Shabadoo III? You can go by Trey. Nobody calls the IV “Quad.” Its a problem.
Rowdy Tellez was born Ryan John Tellez, and that doesn’t seem like a name that would immediately result in one embracing a nickname. It seems more likely than a Ryan John Tellez, if he didn’t want to be Ryan or John, would go by R.J. R.J. Tellez has a good ring to it.
When I was starting law school, part of the orientation involved getting your picture taken for the Facebook and providing the name you went by. I remember thinking, hmmmm, I’ve gone through my whole life as Adam Morris, but now I’ve moved to a city where I don’t know anybody, am going to be going to school with almost 300 people who don’t know me…this is my chance to be someone different if I want.
I have had a few nicknames in my younger days. One year on my baseball team they called me “Pee Wee” because I was the smallest one on the team but was still pretty good (the being the smallest one on the team continued throughout my youth baseball career, the being pretty good didn’t). In high school I got called Chubs by my soccer teammates. Later on in law school I gave myself the nickname “8 ball” as a joke, and many of my law school classmates still call me that.
But at orientation I wasn’t thinking of any of those. What I thought about was going by “A.J.”, a name my parents have occasionally called my throughout my life, a name that my now law partner calls me sometimes. I thought, Adam Morris, that sounds boring, like a stodgy tax attorney. But A.J. Morris…now there’s a lawyer who isn’t afraid of new ideas?
I chickened out, of course. I registered as Adam. Though I do include the middle initial “J.” in my professional listings. And, of course, in my blogging.
Though one is led to wonder…what if, that fateful day in August, 1999, I had gotten a wild hair and told them I went by “Rowdy”? If I entered law school, and then went into the practice of law, as Rowdy Morris? How would my life have changed?
The flap of a butterfly’s wings…
Previously:
