Update on Justin Upton trade rumors to the Texas Rangers

It wasn’t too long ago that several reported that the Texas Rangers were trying to trade possibly Jurickson Profar or other prospects for the Atlanta Braves outfielder Justin Upton.  But, ever since that news no one has confirmed it or even agreed that the Texas Rangers should make such a trade.  Recently the Braves General Managers spoke about the 2014 Hot Stove season and said that there are not any trades in the works he’s working on with Justin Upton.

Any trade involving Justin Upton doesn’t appear to be a good one for the Texas Rangers.  Upton only has one year let on his contract for $14.5 million with no option for 2016.  It has been rumored that Jon Daniels has wanted to acquire Upton for some time now, I’d guess mainly because he is a very good offensive player.  Last season with the Braves he had a batting line of .270/.342/.491/.833 with 34 doubles, 2 triples, 29 home runs and an amazing 102 RBI over 154 games/641 plate-appearance.  He had an offensive WAR of 3.5 and a lowly -0.9 defensive WAR.  That means if the Texas Rangers do acquire him they will upgrade the line up with someone who can hit and drive the ball, but they’ll still have a very weak left-fielder.  Which is something they already have with Shin-Soo Choo and arguably Michael Choice.

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If the Rangers do make a serious attempt to get Upton, they’ll like purge out of their plethora of middle-infielders.  That means Jurickson Profar or even Elvis Andrus could be on the trade table, but really they shouldn’t give those two players up.  Elvis Andrus did have a terrible year at shortstop this year and his bat was pretty awful at the beginning of the season, but he should bounce back in 2015.  And as far as Profar goes, he’s only 21 years old and is still considered to be one of the top middle infielders for the Texas Rangers.  He won’t begin to do much baseball until spring, but if everything goes well expect him to be back sometime next season.

Overall, a trade to basically rent a player for one year doesn’t make much sense, unless Jon Daniels thinks that their playoff window is closing and 2015 might be the last year for awhile.  But, I don’t see it that way because there is too much talent in the farm system to help keep this team playing competitive baseball for the next several season.