Patrick Corbin?
The Rangers need innings, and they certainly got a guy who can give them some.
The Rangers’ pitching plan was thrown into a tizzy after Jon Gray and Cody Bradford went down with injuries late in Spring Training. What had once been a deep stockpile of arms has suddenly turned into a major weakness as Opening Day looms on the horizon. With just eight days until the start of the season, Texas finds itself at a crossroads: stick with the arms they have, or seek help from the outside.
It appears they're settling for a little bit of both.
On Tuesday, the Rangers announced the signing of veteran lefty Patrick Corbin to a one-year contract worth $1 million, plus performance-based incentives. It appears Corbin will slot into the back of the rotation once he’s stretched out. However, with personal matters keeping him from joining the team in Arizona (his wife is expecting), Corbin's debut with the Rangers will likely be delayed until one or two weeks into the season. Nonetheless, the signing of the 35-year-old former All-Star gives the Rangers more depth on the pitching side, albeit with one slight catch.
Patrick Corbin—and I don't mean to be disrespectful here—has been one of the worst pitchers in baseball for the past five seasons. He is the only pitcher in baseball history to start at least 30 games and log an ERA of 5.00 or higher in four consecutive seasons. He's been bad—really bad. But here's the key for the Rangers: he eats innings. He gobbles them up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Corbin has thrown at least 150 innings dating back to 2016 (excluding the shortened 2020 season due to COVID-19). Don't get it twisted, he was awful for most of those innings. The Rangers don't seem to care about that all that much, however. All they seem to mind is that he goes out there and takes the ball every fifth day.
In an interview with reporters following the signing, Chris Young, the president of baseball operations for the Rangers, talked about how he was encouraged by Corbin’s second half of last season. While his ERA didn't improve much (5.57 in the first half to 5.68 in the second half), there were some noticeable gains in some key underlying metrics. Kennedi Landry, the Rangers beat writer for MLB.com, pulled the following statistics:
Corbin had a better FIP (4.72 to 3.96), opponents' wOBA (.370 to .388), opponents' on-base percentage (.359 to .331) and opponents' slugging percentage (.511 to .451) after the All-Star break.
Additionally, his K rate (15.9% to 21.6%), walk rate (7.6% to 5.9%), hard-hit rate (48.3% to 44.1%), barrel rate (9.8% to 5.9%), opponents' xBA (.314 to .268), opponents' xSLG (.507 to .451) and opponents' xwOBA (.380 to .322) were all better post-All-Star break as well.
One thing needs to be stated: Chris Young, Bruce Bochy, and the rest of the front office for Texas are under no illusion that Corbin will ever return to his 2018 and 2019 form, the two seasons that earned him a big payday from the Washington Nationals. The Rangers are not being irrational with this move in terms of expectations for Corbin. Again, all they want from him, at least at this current moment, is to be a reliable arm that can hold down the fort until the rest of the staff gets healthy. How good he does while he's on the mound is somewhat of an irrelevant question, however ludicrous that may sound.
When the rest of the staff will get healthy, only God and the Rangers' medical staff know. Jon Gray was given a positive diagnosis on his right wrist fracture; he won’t need surgery and should be able to return before the All-Star break in June, rather than after it in July, as the team feared. Cody Bradford will probably return to pitching in late April or early May.
Importantly, Corbin's arrival is not an indictment of what the Rangers think of Kumar Rocker or Jack Leiter. The Rangers hoped that both of those young pitchers would be ready to take the step into the rotation full-time at the start of this season, but they are simply not ready given the up-and-down performances so far in Spring Training. One of them will be there come Opening Day, but who that is remains a mystery. Only Young and Bochy know the answer to that question.
Corbin’s arrival does not necessarily give the Rangers a better chance of winning baseball games. In fact, it could be argued that it makes them actively worse. But the season is a marathon, not a sprint, and the Rangers are attempting to equip themselves for the long haul. Will it work? We'll see.