Much like most of Major League Baseball, Friday night saw the Texas Rangers take a huge step in shaping their 2025 roster.

With MLB’s non-tender deadline coming and going, rosters across the league switched up or in some cases stayed the same.

The Rangers were certainly the latter as they contemplated their non-tender decisions right up until the deadline.

Ultimately Texas decided to offer contracts to all five arbitration-eligible players keeping them in Arlington for another season.

Coming into the day, there were five Rangers players eligible for arbitration.

RHP Dane Dunning
RHP Josh Sborz
CF Leody Taveras
1B Nathaniel Lowe
C Jonah Heim

Texas was able to reach deals with Dane Dunning and Josh Sborz, helping them to avoid arbitration.

As for the position player group, they will each go to arbitration hearings with Texas at a later date this winter.

Well before the 7:00 PM deadline, the Rangers struck a deal with Dane Dunning for one year and $2.66 million with the opportunity to earn more with incentives.

Dunning will be taking the maximum 20% pay cut allowed under the CBA after finishing with a 5.31 ERA last season.

The details of the deal struck with Josh Sborz were not released but we did find out some injury news with the former World Series hero.

After not knowing exactly what kind of shoulder injury Sborz was struggling with, it was revealed that he underwent a shoulder debridement procedure last week.

Sborz will miss two or three months of the 2025 season causing a blow to the Rangers bullpen which is pretty much non-existent as of now.

Texas will now turn some of their focus to the three arbitration hearings they must prepare for that involve three key pieces of their World Series-winning team.
1st baseman Nathaniel Lowe is projected to make around $10 million while CF Leody Taveras and C Jonah Heim are both projected $4 million.

As we saw with Dunning, the Rangers will be looking for a discount when they face these arbitration hearings.

Dunning was projected $4 million before ultimately landing on the team-friendly $2.66 million contract.

With Rangers ownership wanting to get the team’s payroll below the $241 million luxury tax, any dollar amount saved in arbitration could go a long way in helping Texas have more budget flexibility to upgrade other areas of the team.