In 10 years in the Rangers organization, Mitch Moreland has been moved, displaced, platooned, dangled and, at least once, derided. He could have been traded this past winter. He almost certainly is beginning his final year in Texas.
He is the perfect kind of player to go to an arbitration hearing: one with nothing to lose.
And, yet, a funny thing happened on the way to the hearing early Wednesday.
Moreland and the Rangers decided to settle anyway. In the end, he will receive $5.7 million, nearly doubling the $2.95 million he earned in 2015. What happened after midnight Wednesday morning, though, was not so much about winning and losing at the hearing, it was about everybody involved putting the club's 2016 season first.