Joc Pederson contract with Rangers

The Texas Rangers and free agent DH Joc Pederson have agreed to a two-year, $37 million deal with an opt-out after 2025, a source told MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand on Monday. The team has not confirmed the deal.

Pederson is coming off a standout year in Arizona, hitting .275/.393/.515 with 23 home runs in 449 plate appearances, with most of that damage coming against right-handed pitchers. The left-hander only had 42 plate appearances against southpaws, but posted a respectable .749 OPS when facing them. However, the damage he can do against right-handed pitching (.923 OPS against in 2024) remains his calling card.

Entering the 2022 season, Pederson was coming off two mediocre outings. In the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, his last with the Dodgers, the hard-hitting outfielder struggled with an OPS of .681. The next year, when he played for the Cubs and Braves, he recovered somewhat, but was still below average with a .732 OPS and 18 home runs (although he played a key role in helping Atlanta win the World Series help). .

Pederson then signed with the Giants and had an All-Star season in 2022 with a .274/.353/.521 batting line with 23 home runs in 433 plate appearances for San Francisco. During the offseason, he accepted the Giants’ qualifying offer to stay in the Bay. Even though he didn’t match his 1922 performance, Pederson was still a plus in 1923 with an OPS of .764.

Pederson signed a one-year contract with the D-Backs through 2024 and delivered the best offensive season of his career in several ways. In his age-32 season, he set career highs in batting average, on-base percentage and OPS (.908). His 12.2% walk rate ranked in the top 6% of qualified hitters, and he was also in the top 10% in xwOBA (.378, top 5%), expected slugging (.480, top 10%) and average Exit velocity (92.3). Miles per hour, top 7%).

One of the keys to Pederson’s recent success has been an increase in his walk rate – from 2018 to 2022 it was never above 10%, but since then his walk rate has been 12.8%. While he’s always been a high strikeout guy (23.6%), his trend towards more patience on the field and his ability to prove last season that he can still be very productive bode well for the future .