The 2025 season is now over for your Texas Rangers, with the team finishing right at .500, with an 81-81 record.
Once the playoffs are over, players with at least six years of major league service time
who are not under contract for the 2026 season will become free agents. The Texas Rangers have 47 players on their 40 man roster currently, including seven players on the 60 day injured list. Here is who, out of those 47 players, are scheduled to become free agents:
Tyler Mahle
Jon Gray
Chris Martin
Hoby Milner
Shawn Armstrong
Patrick Corbin
Daniel Coulombe
Merrill Kelly
Phil Maton
Dylan Moore
Donovan Solano
Rowdy Tellez
In addition, Joc Pederson has the right to opt out of his contract. Should Pederson opt out of his contract, the Rangers can keep him by exercising options for the 2026 and 2027 seasons at $18.5 million. Pederson almost certainly isn’t opting out, given the season he had, in which case he will be under contract for $18.5 million in 2026, with a mutual option of $18.5 million for the 2027 season.
The qualifying offer this season is expected to be $22 million, and I can’t imagine the Rangers will be tendering the QO to any of their pending free agents.
Chris Martin, who went on the injured list with Thoracic Outlet Syndrome at the end of the year, is expected to retire. Jon Gray, whose season also ended due to TOS, is reportedly contemplating retirement as well.
Merrill Kelly would be worth tendering a qualifying offer to, I tend to think, were he QO eligible — he’s not a $22 million per year pitcher on a long-term deal, but for one year it would make sense. However, since the Rangers acquired him via trade during the season, he’s not eligible for a qualifying offer.
Tyler Mahle put up a 2.18 ERA this year for the Rangers, and if you were confident you could get a full season of that sort of performance — or even the 3.37 FIP he put up — he’d be potentially worth tendering. However, he hasn’t pitched a full season since 2021.
The departure of those players would leave the Rangers with 35 players on their 40 man roster. Billy McKinney and Dustin Harris, added to the 40 man roster to get the Rangers warm bodies for the active roster towards the end of the year, almost certainly will be waived at the end of the season, which would leave the Rangers with 33 players on the 40 man roster.
The following players are arbitration eligible:
Adolis Garcia
Jonah Heim
Jacob Webb
Josh Sborz
Jake Burger
Josh Jung
Josh Smith
Ezequiel Duran
Sam Haggerty
Garcia, coming off his second down offensive season in a row, seems likely to be non-tendered. He made $10.5 million in 2025, and with the maximum amount that an arbitration-eligible player’s salary can be dropped being 20%, even by agreement, if he isn’t non-tendered, the Rangers would be paying him at least $8.4 million for 2026.
Jonah Heim, also coming off his second straight down season, is also a non-tender candidate, given his $4.575 million salary in 2025 and likely raise if he goes through the arbitration process. However, with Kyle Higashioka’s age and history suggesting he’s a part-time guy, the Rangers might choose to try to bring Heim back at a similar salary, or with a slight haircut — a 20% cut would be $3.66 million — rather than try to find a 1B to Higashioka’s 1A in the trade or free agent market.
Josh Sborz is almost certainly being non-tendered, and his career would appear to be in jeopardy, after he couldn’t make it back to the majors after shoulder surgery last offseason.
Jacob Webb and Sam Haggerty, signed as free agents this past offseason, are each entering their final year of arbitration eligibility. Each would seem to be a viable option to come back in the same roles they had in 2025 for relatively cheap — I doubt either gets more than $1.5 million in the arbitration process, though we shall have to see what MLB Trade Rumors shows their projected salaries as being when they release that. The Rangers have a need for cheap middle relief and a righthanded outfield bench bat, which Webb and Haggerty, respectively, can offer.
Burger, Jung, Smith and Duran are all first time arb-eligible, and are all going to be cheap enough that one would expect that they’d be tendered contacts. It doesn’t mean they’ll still be Rangers in 2026, of course — I wouldn’t be surprised if any of them were traded this offseason — but their low 2026 arb salaries, as well as future control, would seem to keep them from being non-tendered.
So that would mean 30-32 players on the 40 man roster after free agents depart and non-tender decisions are made, and before players are added to the 40 man roster to protect them from the Rule 5 Draft and major leaguers are signed in free agency or traded for.
