Projecting the Texas Rangers Opening Day Roster

Opening Day for the Texas Rangers is now 17 days away and counting down. The second round of demotions was made on Saturday, March 11th and just who exactly will be on the roster is starting to take shape. Going forward, spring training games will feature more non-roster invitees trying to earn a spot on the 26-man roster. Lets go ahead and look into my crystal ball and see who will be on that Opening Day roster when the Rangers take on the Philadelphia Phillies on March 30th, one of the more anticipated days for baseball fans around the world.

The Starting Position Players

C: Jonah Heim

1B: Nathaniel Lowe

2b: Marcus Semien

SS: Corey Seager

3B: Josh Jung

LF: Robbie Grossman

CF: Bubba Thompson

RF: Adolis Garcia

DH: Mitch Garver

The only real question mark in this set of players is center field. Leody Tavares suffering an oblique strain throws into doubt his status for Opening Day. He will likely be re-examined later this week. The results of that will let the team know if he will be ready for Opening Day or on the injured list for Opening Day. Thompson will be able to handle center defensively. He likely will be batting eight or nine in the lineup. If he can just have good at-bats and get on base at a decent clip he will not be a huge negative in the starting lineup. 

Everyone else in the lineup had already earned their spot prior to coming to spring training. Garver at DH may be the exception as the team needed to see how healthy he was before giving him the DH spot. The question with Mitch Garver is how many games will he catch this season. I would expect that he catches once or twice a week and they try to keep him at around 50 games catching, with Heim getting 80, and then the third catcher gets the remaining 32 or fewer games.