{"id":415795,"date":"2026-01-18T23:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T23:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/415795\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T23:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T23:38:10","slug":"rangers-sign-jakob-junis-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/415795\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers Sign Jakob Junis – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rangers have signed right-hander Jakob Junis<\/a> to a one-year, $4MM contract, according to The Athletic\u2019s Ken Rosenthal<\/a>.\u00a0 Shawn McFarland of the Dallas Morning News reports<\/a> that the deal contains a mutual option for the 2027 season.\u00a0 The signing will become official once Texas makes a corresponding move on its 40-man roster.\u00a0 Junis is represented by Wasserman.<\/p>\n

Rosenthal adds<\/a> in a follow-up note that Texas will indeed use Junis as a reliever, coming off Junis\u2019 first bullpen-only season of his nine-year MLB career.\u00a0 Junis has started 116 of his 249 career games, and still made some spot starts and swingman-esque appearances in 2023-24 even as he took on larger relief roles.\u00a0 In 2025, however, Junis signed a one-year, $4.5MM deal with the Guardians and worked only as a reliever over his 57 appearances and 66 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n

The results were more than solid, as Junis posted a 2.97 ERA and an above-average 6.6% walk rate.\u00a0 Junis\u2019 strikeout, chase, and whiff rates weren\u2019t anything special, but in a reversal of career norms, he did a very good job of limiting hard contact.\u00a0 After posting a 1.4 HR\/9 over his first eight seasons, Junis halved that number to 0.7 HR\/9 during his lone season in Cleveland.\u00a0 Junis increased the use of his changeup, and throwing the pitch 20% of the time (up from 8.7% of the time in 2024) helped turn both Junis\u2019 change and his primary slider into very effective out pitches.<\/p>\n

Junis will look to keep things rolling as he enters his age-33 season, and the veteran has been pitching long enough that he broke into the majors with the 2017 Royals as a teammate of current Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young.\u00a0 Junis will become the latest new face to join Young\u2019s total makeover of the Texas bullpen this offseason.<\/p>\n

Chris Martin<\/a> decided to forego retirement to return for another season with the Rangers, but Hoby Milner<\/a>, Shawn Armstrong<\/a>, Jacob Webb<\/a>, and Phil Maton<\/a> have all left in free agency.\u00a0 Texas has filled those gaps with Alexis Diaz<\/a>, Tyler Alexander<\/a>, Carter Baumler<\/a>, Zak Kent<\/a>, and now Junis, who had far and away the best 2025 season of any of this group.\u00a0 Junis\u2019 ability to cover innings and take on some higher-leverage assignments should be a big help to the Rangers as they continue to figure out their ideal relief mix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rangers have signed right-hander Jakob Junis to a one-year, $4MM contract, according to The Athletic\u2019s Ken Rosenthal.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[199085,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-415795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-jakob-junis","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}