The 2023 Angels entered the trade deadline as longshots, but they still launched an aggressive win-now offensive. To break their postseason drought and perhaps show impending free agent Shohei Ohtani their commitment to winning, the Angels acquired Lucas Giolito, Reinaldo Lopez, CJ Cron, Randall Grichuk and Dominic Leone. It was a valiant, if not desperate, effort that didn’t pay off quickly. By mid-August, the Angels were buried in the standings with virtually no hope of rejoining the championship fray. With the previous August trade waiver system gone, GM Perry Minasian and his staff waved the white flag in a new, more drastic way: They put more than a quarter of their roster on full waivers.
By placing Giolito, Lopez, Cron, Grichuk, Leone, Matt Moore, Hunter Renfroe and Tyler Anderson on waivers, the Angels were in a position to A) save a ton of money, B) potentially get under the luxury tax threshold (they were successful), and C) impact their postseason contention several times… except in a different way than originally envisioned. For those who don’t remember, the Guardians got Giolito, Lopez and Moore. Renfroe was acquired by the Reds. Leone went to the Mariners. Grichuk and Anderson weren’t acquired.
Last week, MLBTR’s Darragh McDonald profiled several veterans who could be placed on waivers in exactly this manner later this month. Since Darragh wrote that article, one team has emerged as an even more likely candidate to go down this path. While the Astros have won eight straight games and the Mariners remain in handy position, the Rangers are a daunting 10 games back in the AL West and 10.5 games back in wild-card contention. FanGraphs gives the Rangers a 0.6% chance of making the postseason. Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA is more bullish at 2.4%. Texas isn’t mathematically eliminated, but they’re not far off.
As Dollar pointed out last week and The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and FanGraphs’ John Becker explored this week, there’s an argument the Rangers should cut costs by releasing some of their soon-to-be free agents. In his column, Becker examined how much the Rangers could save by placing soon-to-be free agents on waivers two days before the Aug. 31 postseason eligibility deadline. Rosenthal wrote in his column that there is no clear path for the Rangers to avoid the luxury tax, saying, “The Rangers’ only hope is to save on payroll.”
While that’s technically true, it’s not impossible for the Rangers to get below that threshold without putting their entire roster on waivers. It’s difficult to sneak under the tax threshold, but it could be done without completely cutting next season’s roster. Let’s take a look at how they could get there and what benefits they could reap by doing so.
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