On paper it looks like the Texas Rangers are going to be all about pitching in 2026.
If you ask ESPN’s Buster Olney, they’re setting out on the season with one of the league’s best.
The longtime baseball analyst is dropping his annual rankings of MLB’s best players by position, starting with the best starting pitchers in baseball.
Rangers’ 37-year-old ace Jacob deGrom comes in at No. 10 on the list, with Olney showering praise on what he calls a future Hall of Famer.
Rangers
“DeGrom held hitters to a .196 average in 30 starts last season, his best performance in years,” Olney writes. “His eventual election into the Hall of Fame now seems to be a lock, considering the recent trend in which voters reward candidates for peak performance. His career ERA+ is at 151, sixth all time, behind Clayton Kershaw and Pedro Martinez, who are tied at 154.”
Perhaps more important than his stellar stats last season for the Rangers was deGrom’s health, as he made more starts and pitched more innings in 2025 than he had in his previous five seasons.
A healthy deGrom and a healthy Nathan Eovaldi, who’s returning from end-of-season surgery last year, would represent one of the best 1-2 punches at the top of any rotation in baseball, and Texas’ No. 3 in MacKenzie Gore would only add to that.
DeGrom may be past his days of Tier 1 MLB pitching like Nos. 1 and 2 on Olney’s list, Detroit’s Tarik Slubal and Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes, but he’s still considered one of the league’s best, capable of anchoring what the Rangers hope will be a playoff-bound rotation.
Click here to see Olney’s full top 10.
Watch: Rangers insiders talk spring training storylines, including Kumar Rocker’s growth
Evan Grant and Shawn McFarland are on site at spring training bringing you the latest from Surprise, Ariz.
Rangers’ new-look catching tandem of Higashioka, Jansen welcoming whatever’s asked of them
Things will look a bit different behind the plate in Texas this season with the addition of Danny Jansen and exit of Jonah Heim.
Arrival of ABS challenge system creates new puzzle for Texas Rangers, Skip Schumaker
One key part of spring training will be experimenting with the new system and how teams want to implement it once the games count.
Find more Rangers coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
Click or tap here to sign up for our Rangers newsletter.