LAS VEGAS -- “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” the great American poet Robert Frost once opined.
Much like Frost’s unnamed narrator, the Texas Rangers have a number of roads diverging ahead of them this offseason as all of baseball descended upon Las Vegas for this week’s General Managers Meetings.
“In the offseason, you go into it with a number of different paths,” Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young told reporters on Tuesday. “You choose a path, and it leads you to another set of paths, so to speak. We're very nimble. We're prepared on a number of different fronts.
“Some of that is not perfectly up to us to determine. The market will determine some of it, and then once we commit to a lane, then we'll continue down that lane and make the best decisions possible within the lane we choose.”
There is one glaring lane potentially available to the Rangers this offseason: trading star shortstop Corey Seager, who was World Series MVP in 2023, when he led the club to the first title in franchise history. Maybe even trading their two other big contracts in Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi as well.
Young said last week that he expects the payroll to stay about the same as 2026 -- in the $190 million range -- but that the club still intends to be competitive. That will involve creativity, including the possibility of moving one of those big-money contracts.
Teams inquired about Seager at last year’s Winter Meetings and again at this year’s Trade Deadline -- when deGrom refused to waive his own no-trade clause -- but the Rangers were not particularly looking to listen hard at that point.
Nothing is definite. But one thing is for sure -- the Rangers are willing to listen to what teams have to offer.
“As I said last week, we're very open-minded and we're looking at this from a different lens, maybe than where we've been,” Young said. “And it doesn't mean that we're going to make any significant deals. It doesn't mean that we're close-minded to those, either. We're just going to see what the market is and do our best to make the Texas Rangers as competitive as possible.”
On the surface, trading Seager would not be easy. The shortstop will be 33 next year and is set to be paid $32.5 million as he’s halfway through a 10-year, $325 million deal he signed going into the 2022 season.
He’s coming off a career-worst offensive season in which he also posted a career-low 106 wRC+.
His OPS has dropped from 1.013 in 2023 -- when he finished as runner-up in AL MVP voting -- to .865 in ‘24, .860 in ‘25 and .736 in ‘26. He’s played between just 102-123 games in each year during that span.
He also had two back-related IL stints in 2026 and underwent surgery to remove a bone spur in his elbow at the conclusion of the regular season.
Additionally, Seager also has 10-and-5 rights, which is bestowed upon players who have 10 years of Major League service time and spent the past five consecutive years with the same team. After reaching 10-5 rights, that player can veto any trade.
But despite all of that, Seager improved to nearly career norms following his July 31 return from the injured list. Despite the age and injury history, it’s easy to see why any team would be interested, especially within a relatively weak shortstop market in free agency.
- Before All-Star break (51 games): .182/.292/.374 (88 wRC+)
- After All-Star break (51 games): .269/.332/.472 (124 wRC+)
However small Texas' budget may be, the Rangers do still believe they can operate within it and still be competitive in the AL West. Young spoke of “operating on multiple fronts simultaneously” and “going down parallel paths on different players and different concepts.”
There are a number of ways this can all play out. They can trade one or two or all three or none of them. But it would certainly seem like change is on the horizon.
“It doesn't have to be any of them,” Young said. “It doesn't have to be all of them. It doesn't have to be two of them. We're not under financial duress to say we've got to shed these contracts. That's not the case. Our job is to build the best baseball team we can build, and that's that's the goal. … I mean, we're not looking to trade anybody. We're just exploring what the market is to make Rangers as good as we can in ‘27 and beyond.”