{"id":53618,"date":"2022-03-12T14:41:21","date_gmt":"2022-03-12T19:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=53618"},"modified":"2022-03-12T19:15:54","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T00:15:54","slug":"texas-rangers-trade-for-mitch-garver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2022\/03\/12\/texas-rangers-trade-for-mitch-garver\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Rangers Trade for Mitch Garver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2022\/03\/11\/rangers-sign-martin\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Texas Rangers<\/a> pulled the trigger for the first post-lockout major trade. The Rangers and <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2022\/02\/23\/minnesota-twins-all-time-team-tournament\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Minnesota Twins<\/a> came to an agreement on a deal that will send catcher Mitch Garver to Texas and infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa to Minnesota. Jeff Passan of ESPN was the first to tweet out the trade. Pitching prospect Ronny Henriquez will be a part of the deal.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">And the trades begin!<\/p>\n<p>The Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers are in agreement on a deal that will send shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa to the Twins, sources familiar with the situation tell ESPN.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JeffPassan\/status\/1502681865702055943?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 12, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Texas Rangers Keep Making Moves<\/h2>\n<p>For the Rangers, their moves before and after the lockout have become headline-grabbing moves. It&#8217;s been a very busy offseason for the improving ball club. Texas threw big money at shortstop Corey Seager and second baseman, Marcus Semien. The addition of those All-Star infielders, along with the impending arrival of top prospect Josh Jung, led to immediate reports that Kiner-Falefa was the odd man out.<\/p>\n<h3>Minnesota Gains Strong Addition<\/h3>\n<p>Minnesota lost Andrelton Simmons to the Chicago Cubs via free agency. Now that they have Kiner-Falefa in the fold, it fills a void Simmons once had. Similar to Simmons, Kiner-Falefa is a defensive-first plater, but his offense has room for improvement. He hit .271\/.312\/.357 last year with a wRC+ of 95. Those numbers don&#8217;t stand out, but they are an upgrade over Simmons&#8217;s numbers. Although, Kiner-Falefa has never had a wRC+ higher than 95 and he&#8217;s still fairly young as he&#8217;ll be 27 before Opening Day. The Twins made a strong addition to their infield, but they had to send a valuable player like Garver the other way.<\/p>\n<p>Garver had a breakout campaign in 2019, hitting .273\/.365\/.630 with a 155 wRC+. Despite dealing with injuries the last two seasons, his 2021 line was .256\/.358\/.517. Last season, the Rangers split the catching duties between Jose Trevino and Jonah Heim. With Garver as the new backstop, he&#8217;s more capable of producing at a much higher rate. Plus, he has another year of control remaining after this season.<\/p>\n<p>With Kiner-Falefa on his way to Minnesota, Texas will need a third baseman whether it&#8217;s from free agency or through a trade. Plus, the Twins have a pitching prospect in Henriquez. Minnesota is in desperate need of pitching after trading Jos\u00e9 Berrios and losing Michael Pineda to free agency.<\/p>\n<h4>Players Mentioned:<\/h4>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/g\/garvemi01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mitch Garver<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kineris01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Isiah Kiner-Falefa<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=henriq000ron\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ronny Henriquez<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/seageco01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Corey Seager<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/semiema01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Marcus Semien<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/t\/trevijo01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jose Trevino<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/h\/heimjo01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jonah Heim<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/berrijo01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jos\u00e9 Berrios<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/p\/pinedmi01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michael Pineda<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Texas Rangers pulled the trigger for the first post-lockout major trade. The Rangers and Minnesota Twins came to an agreement on a deal that will send catcher Mitch Garver to Texas and infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa to Minnesota. Jeff Passan of ESPN was the first to tweet out the trade. Pitching prospect Ronny Henriquez will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3686,"featured_media":53639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,2,13,1071],"tags":[627,69,978],"class_list":["post-53618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rangers","category-featured","category-twins","category-mlb","tag-al-west","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-trades"],"modified_by":"Evan Thompson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3686"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}