Late in the 2021 season, and then in the aftermath of a 102 loss disaster of a year, the Texas Rangers’ front office indicated that the team would be aggressive in free agency this offseason. Jon Daniels, Chris Young, Chris Woodward...all indicated that the organization was prepared to add salary in a way that they have not done the previous few years, to ratchet the payroll back up towards where it was when the team was in its competitive window.
Those declarations were met with a healthy dose of skepticism. One of the most common responses was that we would hear a lot of “well, we made a competitive offer” excuses while the team ended up bottom feeding for additions.