With the 2025 Texas Rangers season having come to an end, we shall be, over the course of the offseason, taking a look at every player who appeared in a major league game for the Texas Rangers in 2025.<\/p>\n
Today we are looking at outfielder Billy McKinney.<\/p>\n
Ah, Billy McKinney\u2026Texas native, product of Plano West, first round pick of the Oakland A\u2019s in 2013.<\/p>\n
The funny thing about McKinney coming out of high school is that he\u2019s the type of player the 2013 Texas Rangers steered clear of, but that the 2026 Texas Rangers would have high on their draft board. From BA\u2019s writeup of him at the time:<\/p>\n
McKinney has one of the sweetest swings in the 2013 draft, and he has hit his way into the first round with a strong spring. He generates excellent bat speed from the left side of the plate, and he barrels balls with ease thanks to his hand-eye coordination and disciplined approach. The 6-foot-2, 195-pounder has strength and should grow into solid power. The rest of McKinney\u2019s tools are fringy to average, but his arm and speed play up because he goes all-out all the time. Scouts love his makeup and are confident that he\u2019ll provide the offense required on an outfield corner<\/p>\n
Great swing and hit tool, not a lot of current power but projects to power, everything else fringy, great makeup\u2026I expect the Rangers to take a high school hitter in the first few rounds of this year\u2019s draft whose scouting report could be boiled down to that.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the power never really developed past average, and the hit tool ended up being more okay than great, and when you\u2019ve got nothing else in your box to fall back on, you end up dropping in the prospect rankings and eventually landing in perpetual NRI land.<\/p>\n
You can track McKinney\u2019s prospect arc in the myriad of trades he was involved in. A year and a month after being drafted by the A\u2019s, he went to the Cubs as the second prospect (behind Addison Russell) in a deal where the A\u2019s acquired Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel, with Dan Straily also going to Chicago. Two years and 20 days after that, he was again sent out as the second prospect in a deadline deal, this time to the Yankees for rental closer Aroldis Chapman, with Gleyber Torres as the headliner, and Adam Warren and Rashad Crawford also going to New York.<\/p>\n
Samardzija, incidentally, was traded by Oakland that winter to the White Sox for a package that included Marcus Semien.<\/p>\n
Anyway, two years and one day after he was traded to the Yankees, he was once again in a deadline trade, this time wo the Toronto Blue Jays, along with Brandon Drury, in exchange for J.A. Happ, a deal that would indicate that his star had fallen significantly from where it was before. After that, he was claimed on waivers from the Jays by the Brewers in September, 2020, traded by the Brewers to the Mets in May, 2021, for Pedro Quintana, and then traded by the Mets to the Dodgers in July, 2021, for Carlos Rincon. The Rangers purchased him from the Dodgers that November, then non-tendered him a week later.<\/p>\n
The transactions log for McKinney in that time paints a picture.<\/p>\n
McKinney has spent at least part of every major league season since 2018 in the big leagues, accumulating a whopping 327 games and 964 plate appearances in that time for nine different clubs, one of which is Your Texas Rangers.<\/p>\n
You are forgiven if you don\u2019t remember this, but McKinney had two different stints in the bigs with Texas in 2025. Released by the Mets, for whom he was toiling in AAA, in May, he signed at the end of the month with Texas and joined the Express. He was up briefly in July when Evan Carter went on the bereavement list, going 1 for 7 in two games before being DFA\u2019d upon Carter\u2019s return, clearing waivers, opting for free agency, and then re-signing with Texas.<\/p>\n
Then, at the end of September, when everyone was hurt, Texas added him to the 40 man and active roster once again, replacing Wyatt Langford, who went on the i.l. He went 3 for 13 in four starts.<\/p>\n
McKinney ended the season with a .200\/.238\/.250 slash line for Texas. Not great, but then, his role was to be a warm body for a handful of games when Texas needed a warm body. The veteran depth in AAA, who can be called up when injuries or other events necessitate a short term plug.<\/p>\n
McKinney does not appear to have signed with anyone yet this offseason, but I imagine he will. He\u2019ll get a minor league deal with an NRI, get some plate appearances in camp, probably won\u2019t make the major league roster, will spend the 2026 season at one or more team\u2019s AAA affiliate, and wait to see if he\u2019s needed for a dozen or so plate appearances in the majors for some club needing a short-term patch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the 2025 Texas Rangers season having come to an end, we shall be, over the course of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2393],"tags":[52311,5,4,149,1567,69,3240],"class_list":{"0":"post-558174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas-rangers","8":"tag-2025-season-in-review","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-rangers","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-rangers","14":"tag-texasrangers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116024924230360395","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}