2026 Texas Rangers payroll situation update

With the Texas Rangers having made a trade involving players under contract for a lot of money, and with the non-tender deadline having passed, it is a good time to check in on the current state of the 2026 Texas Rangers’ payroll. We previously looked at the state of things in mid-October.

The Texas Rangers currently have seven players under contract for 2026. Those seven are:

Jacob deGrom — $38M

Corey Seager — $31.5M

Nathan Eovaldi — $31M*

Brandon Nimmo — $20.25M

Joc Pederson — $18.5M

Kyle Higashioka — $6.75M

Sam Haggerty — $1.25M

* Eovaldi’s salary can be considered to be $25M, $29M, or $31M, depending on how you do the math. If you want the details, check out the October post linked above.

Last time around we had five players under contract, one of whom was Marcus Semien. In the interim, Semien was traded to the New York Mets for Brandon Nimmo. In addition, Joc Pederson elected not to opt out of his deal, and Sam Haggerty was signed to a one year deal, avoiding arbitration.

The total for those seven players is $147.25 million. However, the New York Mets are sending $5 million to the Rangers as part of the Nimmo trade. I am guessing that that is coming in 2026, which would reduce the outlay for the seven guaranteed deals to $142.25 million.

The Rangers have four arbitration-eligible players who are not yet under contract. Those four, along with the salary estimates from MLBTR, are:

Jake Burger — $3.5M

Josh Smith — $3M

Josh Jung — $2.9M

Ezequiel Duran — $1.4M

That puts the payroll figure at $158.05 million for 11 players.

On a side note, Cots has different arbitration estimates for those four players than MLBTR does, coming in, in aggregate, a little over $1 million less.

On another side note, we have discussed the surprising non-tender of Jacob Webb, whose salary was projected by MLBTR at $2 million and by Cots at $1.75 million. Something that I believe was a factor in that decision is a provision in the CBA relating to performance bonuses. Article VI of the CBA deals with salaries, with Article VI(B)(2) dealing with the calculation of the previous seasons salary for a player for purposes of tendering a contract, in the context of the maximum salary reduction allowed. Article VI(B)(2)(a)(iv) states:

Performance Bonus Adjustment. If the contract contains performance bonuses, regardless of whether or not any portion of the bonus is earned, the Club has the option of either adding the entire bonus (both earned and unearned portions) in the Base Salary, or excluding it from the Base Salary but repeating the bonus on the same terms.

The contract Jacob Webb signed with the Rangers provided for $1.5 million in potential performance bonuses. My interpretation of this provision is that, when the Rangers tendered Webb a contract, those bonuses would have to be repeated on the same terms. Extrapolating from that, the contract to be tendered for arbitration purposes, were it to go to an arbitration, would seem to also be required to include those provisions. The difference between paying Webb a potential guaranteed $2 million, and paying him a potential guaranteed $2 million plus, potentially, another $1.5 million in performance bonuses, may be the reason for his being non-tendered.

There will also be salaries for pre-arb-eligible players on the 40 man roster. Those who are in the minors will receive less than the major league minimum, those who are in the majors will be getting more or less the major league minimum. Cots has that at $14.5 million, though that assumes 15 players at league minimum in the majors. That number will drop as players are signed and/or traded for who will be in the majors.

For our purposes, and to make the math easy, let’s assume $11.95 million for the pre-arb guys, majors and minors. That gets us to a payroll of $170 million.

We know that payroll is going down from 2025, when it was a little north of $220 million. How much its going down is not something that has been publicly disclosed. My guess would be that the floor is around $200 million, which would mean that the Rangers, as of now, have $30-50 million available to spend.

The Rangers’ needs boil down to:

A starting catcher

A starting pitcher

Four to six relief pitchers

This isn’t to say that there aren’t other moves that would represent upgrades that the Rangers could — and maybe should — try to make. But these are the additions that the Rangers pretty much have to make.

The catcher situation is obvious. Jonah Heim was non-tendered. Kyle Higashioka is under contract, but he turns 36 in April, has never started more than 77 games in a major league season, and dealt with injuries last year. The only other catcher on the 40 man roster is Willie MacIver, a guy who has a good chance of being dropped from the 40 man roster before Opening Day, and who, if he sticks on the roster, would be a the third catcher stashed in AAA in case someone in the majors gets hurt.

Other than J.T. Realmuto, the catching market isn’t particularly good. On the other hand, other than J.T. Realmuto, the catching market isn’t going to be particularly expensive. You’re probably looking at $5-8 million for a guy to be the 1A to Higashioka’s 1B.

As far as the rotation goes, well, as of right now, you have Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi, and Jack Leiter penciled in. Behind them are Kumar Rocker and Jacob Latz. Cody Bradford is expected back at some point in the first half of the season, though whether that’s spring training or June or somewhere in between is up in the air. Jose Corniell, who had an impressive return from Tommy John surgery, is a depth option in the minors, though he has barely pitched the past two seasons. Winston Santos, David Davalillo and Leandro Lopez are all on the 40 man roster, though one would not be expecting anything from them in 2026, I don’t think.

In an ideal world, you’d go get a pair of veteran starters, put Latz in the pen, and have Rocker in AAA as your sixth starter. More realistically, you’d like to find a reliable innings-eating veteran to slot into the #3 or #4 spot in the rotation. The going rate for someone like that is probably $12-18 million on a short term deal. If you’re on the lower end of that range, maybe you also roll the dice on someone like 2025 Patrick Corbin, though the starters who get those sorts of deals frequently end up getting released during the year because, well, they aren’t good enough to get more than a one year deal for a few million.

Which brings us to the bullpen.

For the second year in a row, the Rangers are having to essentially put together a new bullpen. Last offseason, Chris Young added Chris Martin, Luke Jackson, Hoby Milner, Shawn Armstrong, Jacob Webb and Robert Garcia to a bullpen that had almost no holdovers.

This year, the Rangers can most likely pencil in Robert Garcia and Cole Winn as reliever. Jacob Latz is probably best suited to a bullpen role, even if it is the sort of swingman role he had last year, though he could theoretically be vying for a rotation spot.

Behind them, the pitcher who is still with the Rangers who had the most relief innings for the team in 2025 is Luis Curvelo, who had 19 innings over 17 appearances. After him, its Marc Church, at 4.2 innings, Ezequiel Duran, with 3.1 innings, and Jose Corniell, with 1.2 innings.

I am pretty sure that the hope in 2025 was that Church and Emiliano Teodo would establish themselves as viable major league bullpen options. That didn’t happen, with both battling injuries, and Teodo struggling to throw strikes when he was healthy.

I suspect that the Rangers will follow a similar bullpen construction strategy as last year, targeting inexpensive options and NRIs. $15 million seems like a reasonable ballpark number, though it could be less.

If the Rangers spend $20-25 million on a catcher and a starting pitcher, plus $10-15 million on the bullpen, that would put payroll at $200-210 million. Which would seem to be the range we would expect them to land in, given what we have heard.