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 reliever Phil Maton.
The life of a useful but not great major league reliever is a life where you don’t put down roots. You’re a vagabond, going from city to city, rarely staying in any one place for very long.
Take Phil Maton, for example. He first appeared in the majors in 2017.
He’s made at least 30 major league appearances every year since his debut, other than in 2020, when he appeared in just 23 games, for obvious reasons. He has appeared in at least 63 games in each of the past five seasons.
Per B-R, Maton has accumulated eight years and 47 days of major league service time. In accumulating those 8-plus years of service time, he has played for seven teams. Barring something unforeseen, he will chalk up a major league appearance for his eighth team — the Chicago Cubs, who signed him to a two year plus option deal this offseason — in roughly two-plus weeks.
He was traded by the San Diego Padres, where he started his career, and for whom he pitched for two-plus seasons, to Cleveland in 2019 for international bonus slot money. He was traded two years later in a deadline deal to the Astros, along with Yainer Diaz, for Myles Straw.
That had to have hurt, having a team not just trade you for Myles Straw, but have to include another player in the deal because you aren’t, on your own, good enough to be traded straight up for Myles Straw.
Maton was purchased in July, 2024, from the Rays by the Mets, which is probably worse than being traded for international slot money or as part of the acquisition price for Myles Straw, since it was an instance of a team just wanting another club to take him off their hands.
And of course, Maton was traded again at the deadline in 2025, to Texas. Texas gave up Skylar Hales, Mason Molina and international bonus slot money for him, and I’m wondering if he’s the first player to be traded twice in deals for international bonus slot money.
Maton had pitched well for the Cardinals, and the package the Rangers gave up was fairly light. Neither Hales nor Molina are currently listed among the Cardinals’ top 30 prospects per BA. Hales is a reliever who got hammered while pitching for Frisco and Round Rock before being traded, and then got hammered while pitching for Memphis post-trade. Molina is a pitchability lefty starter in A ball who the Rangers got for Grant Anderson the previous winter. Neither is likely to do anything of note in the majors.
In his first five games for the Rangers post-trade, Maton allowed one run in five innings over five outings. In his final 16 outings, he allowed three runs over 15.2 innings over 16 appearances. That’s very good!
The two appearances Maton made between those stretches, however, are probably what Rangers fans will end up remembering him for, as they involved him taking the “L” in two of the most gut-wrenching, stomach-punching, devastating losses the Rangers experienced all year.
The first one was August 13, at home against Arizona.
You remember that game. Phil Maton had an immaculate inning with an asterisk, striking out the final batter of the eighth inning on three pitches, and then striking out the first two batters he faced in the ninth on six pitches. With the Rangers up 4-2, the Shed rocking, Rangers fans thought that Pat Green’s voice was imminent.
Instead, James McCann, of all people homered. And then Blaze Alexander was hit by a pitch, and Geraldo Perdomo walked on four pitches, and then Ketel Marte, for the second day in a row, hit a ninth inning game winning homer.
I am feeling nauseous even now, thinking about that, remembering it.
Two days later, in Toronto, with Texas up 5-2 in the eighth, Danny Coulombe gave up three singles without retiring anyone, resulting in Maton being summoned to put out the fire. Like Billy Joel, Maton didn’t start the fire. Unfortunately, he didn’t put it out, either. A walk and a K was followed by a bases loaded walk, and then Alejandro Kirk singled in a pair of runs. Jeff Hoffman struck out the side in the top of the ninth on 11 pitches, and that was that.
Phil Maton, overall, pitched pretty well for the Rangers in 2025. Texas got a 3.52 ERA and 2.70 FIP out of him in 23 appearances. For what they gave up, you’ll take that all day, every day.
Unfortunately, his time with the Rangers was ultimately defined by the two awful losses in the midst of an awful stretch in August.
Previously:
