Texas Rangers: Sights and sounds of spring training have us pumped up

Full squad workouts began Monday for the Texas Rangers, which means we’re getting ever so close to the first spring training game of the year on Sunday February 28th against the KC Royals.

We’re also inching nearer to Opening Day in Kansas City on April 1 as well.

After a week of pitcher and catcher activities, which saw the likes of new starters Dane Dunning and Kohei Arihara throwing bullpens for the first time in their new digs, the rest of the team finally joined in on the action.

The Texas Rangers have started spring training and we’re excited!

Simply glorious.

The site of players in jerseys, balls popping into mitts and now the crack of the bat. These are the small sounds of joy that we spend months during the long, dark winter heavily anticipating.

We would just like to point out how good Arihara, Dunning and Folty all look in Texas Ranger red, white and blue as well.

Kohei Arihara looks great in his new Texas Rangers threads.

Hope springs eternal at this time of the year, even with the Texas Rangers’ miniscule postseason chances in 2021.

You might understand why we feel this way after you watch this video of Joey Gallo raking in the cage.

Joey Gallo looks ready to mash for the 2021 Texas Rangers.

We forgot how majestic Joey Gallo can be with the bat, but now we remember quite vividly how incredible this sight is to sore baseball eyes.

For the 2021 Rangers, a lot hinges on whether Gallo can re-kindle his 2019 All-Star form, something to watch as spring training gets going in earnest.

If the ball sounds like it did off Gallo’s bat in that video, I think the team would be quite satisfied with that.

We’ll have more content for you as we progress further along into spring training, but for now, here’s a quick recap of what’s happened in Surprise so far.

Ranger Rumblings

• The team signed Ian Kennedy to a minor league deal on Monday. Kennedy, who has spent the last five seasons in Kansas City, was Royals’ closer as recently as 2019 after transitioning into that role from being a starter. He projects to compete for a spot in a wide open Rangers bullpen.
• Manager Chris Woodward won’t definitively name a closer after declining to commit to Jose Leclerc in that role. The battle for the closer’s spot will now be one to monitor this spring training.
• Prospect Justin Foscue received an invite to MLB camp as a non-roster invitee after initially failing to make the cut going into spring training. He is not expected to be on the big league roster for opening day, though it’s telling that the Rangers finally did extend him an invite.
• Kohei Arihara feels like he’s ready to make the jump to MLB and was blown away by the Rangers’ presentation to him during the off-season posting process.