Texas Rangers 25 of 25: Chris Gimenez tendered

Today’s Texas Rangers 25 for 25 will focus on catcher Chris Gimenez.  At the deadline the Rangers decided to tender him with a pretty good pay raise and minor league deal.

First of all don’t panic about the minor league deal.  It’s just there to set guidelines in case he’s sent back down to the minors at some point during the 2016 season.  I’m sure he wants to make sure he’ll have some stability throughout the season.  It reminds me of the 2014 season when he managed to get some playing time in the majors.  His wife had a baby and it wasn’t too much longer after that he was sent back down to the minors.

At that time I felt like he was doing well, but there wasn’t room on the roster and someone had to be moved.  I know it has to be stressful for him during that time.  Maybe that was a bit of the driving force to ensure he had a good deal if he’s sent back down.  At the time of his departure from Texas he was batting .262/.331/.355/.686 with 10 doubles, and 11 RBI.  Luckily for Gimenez he was picked up pretty quick by the Cleveland Indians. In case you haven’t been keeping up with some of my recent I’ve been a pretty big proponent of Gimenez.  I’ve been pretty impressed with skills, his work ethic, and attitude.  I think he’s a very good catcher.   He’s not going to be an Ivan Rodriguez, but he’s good.

Last season with the Rangers he had a batting average of .255/.330/.490/.820 with 6 doubles, 1 triple, 5 home runs, and 14 RBI over 36 games and 113 plate appearances.  He didn’t start getting any regular playing time until the second half of the season.  Prior to that Carlos Corporan was the backup catcher behind Robinson Chirinos.  The Rangers placed Corporan on the 15-day disabled list with a sprained left thumb. This past week was the deadline to tender players.  The Rangers decided to give Gimenez a nice increase in pay.  During the 2015 season he made about $510,000.  Since Gimenez was tendered that meant he avoided arbitration and was able to settle on a new contract.  His new contract is worth about $975,000. Jeff Wilson of the Star-Telegram had this to say about the signing.

"“Gimenez seemed the least likely to be non-tendered, in part because catching depth is hard to come by and also because he is highly regarded by staff aces Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish.” – Star-Telegram"

During the 2015 season he had a very good month of August batting .281 with 3 doubles, 4 home runs and 9 RBI, but he cooled off a bit in September only batting .241 with 3 doubles, 1 triple, 1 home run, and 4 RBI. But, In my opinion you pay catchers to catch and hope they have a decent bat.  He will have to work on catching base runners this season.  He was very weak in that area last season.

Next: Rougned Odor wins Richard Durrett award

By most measure Gimenez has a decent bat and I expect him to do about the same next season.  I hope he continues to improve and does well in Spring Training.

Watch: Gimenez hits his first career triple