The Rangers have already added four relievers this offseason—Robert Garcia, Jacob Webb, Shawn Armstrong, and Hoby Milner—but they are still in need of a proven high-leverage arm. Together, Webb, Garcia, Armstrong, and Milner have only accumulated 15 career saves. As a result, president of baseball operations Chris Young acknowledges that there’s more work to be done, stating to Evan Grant of The Dallas Morning News, “We’re going to need to continue to pursue leverage arms.”

In line with this, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic recently referred to re-signing Kirby Yates as “a priority” for Texas, while Grant mentioned that the team would “absolutely love” to bring back their All-Star closer.

Yates had an outstanding 2024 season, posting a 1.17 ERA and a 2.85 SIERA over 61 appearances, while saving 33 of 34 opportunities. His combination of a dominant four-seam fastball and splitter made him just as effective at getting swings and misses as he was at limiting hard contact. Despite being 37 years old, Yates was one of the most dominant closers in the league, vastly outperforming the one-year, $4.5MM deal he signed before the season.

Given his remarkable performance, it’s clear why the Rangers are eager to re-sign Yates, even though he’ll likely demand a much higher salary this time around. MLBTR ranked him 38th on their Top 50 Free Agents list, projecting a one-year, $14MM contract.

Young may need to get creative with the budget to fit that kind of deal—especially since Texas is reportedly aiming to stay under the luxury tax threshold for 2025.

However, with their current luxury tax payroll estimated at around $229MM, $12MM under the first tax tier, a move to sign Yates would likely push them over, but not by so much that Young couldn’t find a way to adjust the payroll back down.