{"id":265097,"date":"2025-11-06T07:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T07:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/265097\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T07:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T07:39:07","slug":"joc-pederson-exercises-player-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/265097\/","title":{"rendered":"Joc Pederson Exercises Player Option"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joc Pederson<\/a> has officially exercised his $18.5MM player option for the 2026 season, according to a report from The Associated Press<\/a>. The deal contains a matching mutual option for 2027. This was the only option decision for the Rangers this offseason.<\/p>\n

It was also one of the easiest option calls of the winter. Pederson\u2019s first season in Arlington was terrible. He signed as a near full-time designated hitter who was supposed to tee off on right-handed pitching. He instead hit .181\/.285\/.328 with nine home runs over 306 trips to the plate. He started the year slowly, fractured his right hand when he was hit by a pitch in May, and was only marginally better in the second half. Pederson had a strong August but otherwise struggled throughout the year.<\/p>\n

He obviously wouldn\u2019t have come close to an $18.5MM salary on the open market. That made it a no-brainer to stick around for what he hopes to be a rebound season. Pederson mashed at a .275\/.393\/.515 clip with the Diamondbacks two seasons ago. The Rangers probably don\u2019t have much choice but to run it back with him as their primary DH. They\u2019d be unable to offload more than a couple million dollars in a trade.<\/p>\n

Texas is likely to reshape the offense via trades or non-tenders of the likes of Adolis Garc\u00eda<\/a>,\u00a0Jonah Heim<\/a> and\u00a0Josh Jung<\/a>. They\u2019d have a tougher time finding a taker for the underwater Pederson and Marcus Semien<\/a> deals. It\u2019d be surprising if they trade Corey Seager<\/a>, whose contract would be prohibitive for all but a handful of teams and who remains one of the team\u2019s two or three best hitters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joc Pederson has officially exercised his $18.5MM player option for the 2026 season, according to a report from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,122325,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-265097","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-joc-pederson","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}