With first spring training sta...

SURPRISE, Arizona — The metal seats immediately outside the chain-link fence behind home plate in the "TX 1" backfield at the shared Texas Rangers/Kansas City Royals facility in Surprise, Arizona, were the warmest on Monday morning... I'm not sure why they have you pay tickets to minor-league spring training games.

The Rangers lost more than 100 games in 2021, ten years after their previous World Series appearance. The next offseason, the organization spent $500 million on two great shortstops in a bold attempt to usher in a new era. They lost 94 games in 2022 and ended even further behind the first-place Houston Astros. To put it simply, the Rangers' rotation allowed more runs than 23 other MLB starting rotations.

Even before the season ended, the franchise sacked its manager and head of baseball operations, replacing him with former pitcher Chris Young. The Rangers sacked two pitching instructors during the winter, replacing them with the man who was their pitching coach when they won the World Series in consecutive years. They persuaded a three-time champion manager to return from retirement. They also changed the rotation.

The Rangers signed free-agent contracts with: Andrew Heaney, a Dodgers reclamation project-turned-starter who had the second-most strikeouts per nine innings last year (provided you set the inning cutoff low enough); Nathan Eovaldi, a member of the 2018 champion Red Sox rotation; and Jacob deGrom, the sport's most tantalizingly talented pitcher.

The Rangers and Royals share a spring training site, and their minor-league players frequently collide in the outfield. Minor-league games are even more restricted than major-league spring training games since they are more about preparation than competitiveness. As a result, an hour and a half before the majority of the big-league club faced the Arizona Diamondbacks, Eovaldi faced the Royals' Double-A team, while deGrom faced the Royals' Triple-A team, having returned from his own brief rest for a similar side strain.

When the Mets won 101 games last season despite deGrom's impending free agency, it felt like the end was near. He would deliver a historic triumph, an instant classic that would cement his legacy as the best pitcher of his time, to a city that loved him almost frantically despite the fact that he never felt completely at home there. Nobody needs to remind Mets fans of what occurred next.

And now he's here, in his 35th season with a new team, yet without a ring to his name. Maybe someday, Jacob deGrom will represent something different to Rangers fans, and the city will only bring him good memories. His brilliance is so obvious that it's easy to get ahead of yourself. He appears to be a sure bet, a magic bullet on the mound. Yet assurances are often an illusion, so the Rangers made a cautious first move Monday morning in Arizona's backfields.