David Schoenfield, ESPN Senior Writer 1y

MLB free agency grades: Texas Rangers land Jacob deGrom

MLB, Texas Rangers, New York Mets

Welcome to checkbook baseball. When it's your team signing the checks, it can be lots of fun!

The Texas Rangers and Jacob deGrom always made a lot of sense. The Rangers are desperate for starting pitching. They're in win-now mode after signing Corey Seager and Marcus Semien last year and hiring three-time World Series-winning manager Bruce Bochy earlier this offseason. Most importantly, they're a big-market team that has been operating like a mid-market team for too long. After operating top-10 payrolls each season from 2012 to 2015, the Rangers entered a rebuild that has yet to produce any positive results. Their payrolls slid to 19th and 20th the past two seasons -- and they lost 102 games in 2021 and 94 in 2022, leading to the firing of long-time executive Jon Daniels in August.

So the Rangers had money to spend ... but nobody expected a five-year contract for a 35-year-old pitcher who has made just 26 starts over the last two seasons. Even one who at his peak from 2018 through the first half of 2021 posted a 1.94 ERA across 91 starts, the highest level of performance the sport had seen from a starting pitcher over a period of years since Pedro Martinez. ESPN's Kiley McDaniel predicted a three-year contract for deGrom, albeit with a higher annual average of $44 million, as opposed to the $37 million AAV of this $185 million deal. Others predicted a similar deal.

Five years? It's the ultimate high-risk signing from new general manager Chris Young and owners Ray Davis and Bob Simpson.

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