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Texas Rangers News: Three stories to keep an eye out for this week

The last week of January as teams start to get ready for spring training. Time to dive into what the Rangers have left to wrap up this offseason.

By Michael Sanders |
World Series - Arizona Diamondbacks v Texas Rangers - Game One
World Series - Arizona Diamondbacks v Texas Rangers - Game One / Stacy Revere/GettyImages
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January is about to come to an end and with that comes the last month of the year without live baseball until December. Spring training games will get underway in February after pitchers and catchers report in almost two weeks. The offseason business for the Texas Rangers is still not completed. Three stories will be on the front burner this week as some offseason questions might finally be resolved. Lets take a look at what fans should be watching for these final few days of January and into the month of February.

#1- Adolis Garcia Arbitration hearing?

Arbitration hearings get underway starting today, January 29th. We do not know when Garcia's is scheduled for. The hearings will run from January 29th through February 16th. The Texas Rangers and Garcia's representation have until they step inside the hearing room to agree to a contract for 2024. The two sides are pretty far apart. The offer Texas submitted is $5 million for the ALCS MVP and Garcia is asking for 6.9 million. They have until their hearing to try to find a compromise that will make both sides happy.

Texas Rangers fanfest was this past weekend and that brought all of the players back to Arlington to sign autographs and meet with the fans. Garcia was in attendance Friday night for the awards banquet and Saturday for the Fan Fest. He did answer some questions from the media about the situation and had this to say as reported by the Dallas Morning News,

It's hard for me because I'm a hard player, everybody knows me, I just go out there and try every time to get the win for the team, you know, try to be a good teammate. Just a little bit disappointed, but it is what it is. I'm here for the club, being the same guy.
Adolis Garcia

The Texas Rangers are potentially facing their first arbitration hearing since 2000 with Lee Stevens. Chris Young was also asked about the situation with Garcia and had this to say,

I don't think it makes sense to comment. But the dialogue has been very good and we've been very encouraged by the back and forth.
General Manager Chris Young

This situation could be resolved this week with either an agreement to a contract for 2024 or a hearing where an arbitrator will listen to both sides and decide what Garcia will make. Let's hope that it is the former and not the latter. A hearing could damage the long-term relationship between Garcia and the Texas Rangers.

#2- Bally Sports Deadline

It has now been almost a couple of weeks since the Diamond Sports Group, who is the parent for Bally Sports, and Amazon announced a potential agreement that will have Amazon taking over the streaming of some of the teams' Bally Sports airs. Diamond Sports announced at that time that they were giving the Texas Rangers and two other MLB teams till February 1st to come to an agreement for 2024 or be dropped by the regional sports network group. The negotiations on a lower payment amount are ongoing. The deadline is fast approaching.

The two sides have until Thursday before the deadline that Diamond Sports imposed on the negotiations. If there is no agreement and Diamond does drop the Texas Rangers MLB will likely have to pick up the rights and air the games on MLB.tv as well as find local stations to air the games on much like they did for the San Diego Padres in 2023.

The Texas Rangers ownership has to decide if they want to keep their rights on Bally Sports long term and if they feel like this agreement with Amazon will stabilize the market. If they do not then it might be in their best interest to be dropped by Bally Sports and go to the market and see what else is out there. We will know a lot more about what the long term broadcast future is for the Texas Rangers by the end of this week. It will either be with Bally Sports or they will be going to the market to shop their rights around and see if there are any takers.

#3- Jordan Montgomery's Free Agency

There has been plenty of speculation that Montgomery is still a free agent because he wants to return to Texas and is waiting out the Bally Sports situation. The thought is that Texas will approach him with a more competitive offer once they know about their media rights for 2024 and beyond. The big left-handed starter just continues to train for the regular season as he waits to see which uniform he will be wearing. Peter Gammons tweeted last week

Montgomery is waiting this out and training in Boston as his wife is training at a Boston hospital. I would not read too much into that other than he is in Boston currently. That does not mean he will sign with the Red Sox. The consensus continues to be that he wants to be back in Arlington. The pull of coming back to a World Series team is pretty strong as evidenced by Travis Jankowski coming back in a bench role for the defending champions.

If Texas agrees with Diamond Sports it might not be long after that Jordan Montgomery resigns to strengthen their starting rotation. That could happen by this weekend. Montgomery, Blake Snell, and Clayton Kershaw are still on the market. That is something to watch for as the calendar turns from January to February and moving trucks start heading to Arizona and Florida for spring training in the coming weeks.

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