{"id":348688,"date":"2025-12-15T02:46:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T02:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/348688\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T02:46:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T02:46:14","slug":"rangers-havent-had-substantial-talks-on-corey-seager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/348688\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers Haven’t Had Substantial Talks On Corey Seager"},"content":{"rendered":"

TODAY: \u201cWe are not shopping Corey Seager, I want to make that very clear,\u201d Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young said today during an interview with MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM<\/a>.\u00a0 Reiterating many of his same statements to media from earlier in the week, Young today said the trade buzz on Seager was \u201ca little bit overblown,\u201d as interest from rival teams was more in the line of standard due diligence.\u00a0 \u201cMaybe they thought by trading Marcus [Semien]<\/a>, we\u2019d be open on Corey\u2026.We call and check in on great players with other teams as well.\u00a0 So teams are doing their job, I get it,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n

DECEMBER 10: The Rangers, as they look to address several areas of need on the roster while simultaneously scaling back payroll, have received numerous calls on star shortstop Corey Seager<\/a>. However, while Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News lists<\/a> the Red Sox (as was reported last night<\/a>), Yankees and Braves as teams that have inquired, he adds that the Rangers are not at all motivated to move Seager and haven\u2019t had any meaningful trade talks regarding the five-time All-Star.<\/p>\n

On the surface, it sounds like a fairly similar situation to that of Ketel Marte<\/a> in Arizona. Seager, like Marte, is an MVP-caliber talent on a weighty long-term contract whose current club is hoping to walk the line of simultaneously addressing multiple roster needs and scaling back the payroll. The Rangers aren\u2019t expressly turning teams away but also aren\u2019t shopping Seager and would surely need multiple controllable young big leaguers who could help immediately if they were to even entertain the idea of a trade.<\/p>\n

Seager, 32 in April, was limited to 102 games last season thanks to multiple hamstring strains but continued to produce at an elite level when on the field. He hit .271\/.373\/.487 last season and touts a huge .294\/.372\/.544 batting line in his past 1514 plate appearances as a Ranger. That\u2019s 52% better than league-average production after weighting for his home park, by measure of wRC+. Seager also walked at a career-best 13% clip in 2025 and notched the second- or third-best marks of his career in average exit velocity (92.9 mph), barrel rate (15.3%) and hard-hit rate (53.6%). He also posted a career-high 16 Defensive Runs Saved, while Statcast\u2019s Outs Above Average credited him as a positive defender (+4) for the third time in the past four seasons.<\/p>\n

The Rangers signed Seager to a 10-year, $325MM contract prior to the 2022 season. He\u2019s lived up to that massive payday thus far but is still owed $186MM over the next six seasons (paid out evenly at $31MM per year). Adding that type of commitment would send the Yankees careening into the top tier of luxury penalization for a third straight season. They\u2019re currently just shy of the third-tier cutoff ($284MM), per RosterResource<\/a>. As soon as they cross that line, they\u2019ll be subject to a 95% tax on subsequent additions\u00a0and will see their top pick in next year\u2019s draft dropped by 10 places. Effectively, Seager could cost them double the remaining commitment on his contract.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not quite so extreme in Boston, where the Red Sox are about $20MM shy of the first luxury tier. Seager would push them into the first tier for a second straight season. They\u2019d owe a 30% tax on the roughly $11MM of Seager\u2019s contract that clocks in beyond that first penalty line. Once they\u2019re more than $20MM over the limit, that\u2019d jump to 42%. Crossing the threshold by more than $40MM would push the Red Sox\u2019 top draft pick back 10 spots and bump the tax on subsequent additions to 72.5%.<\/p>\n

The Braves are currently the furthest of this group from the luxury tax threshold, sitting about $33MM shy on RosterResource\u2019s projections. They could technically add Seager without hitting the tax line, though acquiring him would effectively signal a willingness to pay the tax, as they\u2019d be about $2MM away from the first-tier cutoff and have several other acquisitions they\u2019d like to make. However, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported last month<\/a> that Atlanta is one of eight teams on Seager\u2019s limited no-trade list. That only further reduces the likelihood of a deal. Seager will gain full no-trade protection after the 2026 season, by virtue of 10-and-5 rights.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still not entirely clear what type of payroll figure Rangers ownership has in mind. Texas currently projects for a payroll around $169MM, which is about $47MM shy of last year\u2019s Opening Day mark. They\u2019re looking for help behind the plate, at first base and on the pitching staff. That\u2019s a lot of boxes to check, clearly, but there should be at least some room for modest spending. There are also various trade avenues to explore that don\u2019t involve shipping out their best all-around position player (or one of their best but expensive arms like Jacob deGrom<\/a> or Nathan Eovaldi<\/a>, for that matter).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s of at least moderate note that Texas didn\u2019t outright dismiss the possibility of trading Seager, but it\u2019s more notable that they\u2019re not digging deeply into the possibility. If one of the interested parties presents a compelling enough offer, perhaps the Rangers would ponder such a switch, but this appears to be a very different scenario than, say, the Cardinals \u2014 a rebuilding club with motivation to shed several veteran contracts and a willingness to pay down some of that salary. Seager\u2019s name may well continue to surface in rumors, just as we\u2019ve seen with Marte in Arizona or Tarik Skubal<\/a> in Detroit, but that doesn\u2019t mean he\u2019s all that available or that the Rangers are eager to deal him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TODAY: \u201cWe are not shopping Corey Seager, I want to make that very clear,\u201d Rangers president of baseball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,42864,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-348688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-corey-seager","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}