4 pitchers Rangers should trade for after deGrom surgery, ranked worst to best

Pitchers for Rangers to trade for: Dylan Cease or Lucas Giolito from White Sox

Let’s stay in Chicago, going just down to the southern part of the city for our final two players the Rangers should be considering trading for. This negotiation might take just one phone call to see what the White Sox want to part with and for what price.

The Chicago White Sox have at least two arms they might be looking to cash in with at the deadline: Dylan Cease and Lucas Giolito.

In my opinion, either of these players would be stellar adds for Texas, and are better than both Stroman and Lorenzen.

The White Sox are 22nd in the MLB in runs per game, so the pitching staff has gotten very little run support in their starts. They’d be instantly better somewhere like Texas.

Giolito gets the slight edge for his veteran experience over Cease, but both pitchers are capable. If the Rangers sign Cease, they’ll be committed for a few extra years as well. If Texas strictly wants a rental, they should push for Giolito.

Giolito’s main pitch, his 4-seamer, also has a -6 run value, whereas Cease’s most-used (also the fastball) has a run value of +6. Cease mixes in his slider almost as much with a strong -5 run value, but Giolito is surely more of an ace replacement for deGrom than Cease is at this time.

Cease’s fastball could come back up to where it once was. In previous years that was a statistically strong pitch, and it still sits in the 81st percentile in velocity and 94th percentile in spin rate. It has 2.2 inches of drop more than the league average, so there’s potential for the pitch to be quite deadly.

That’s the upside with calling Chicago, there are options on the table and multiple different things they can consider all in one phone call. For Texas, they would need to decide if they want a trade that serves as just a stopgap for this season or also a potential longer-term acquisition as well.