Rangers reach one-year deal with lefty Milner

ARLINGTON -- Hoby Milner has stadium seats from the Ballpark in Arlington in his backyard. He grew up watching the Rangers on Channel 27. He was a fan of a handful of teams growing up, but the Rangers were his “ride or die.”

So it was all full circle for Milner on Friday, when the Rangers announced a one-year deal with the veteran left-hander. To make room on the 40-man roster, right-handed pitcher Owen White was designated for assignment.

It is the second bullpen signing for the Rangers this offseason, following the addition of right-hander Jacob Webb during the Winter Meetings.

Milner said that the Rangers were one of the first teams to reach out to him after he was non-tendered by the Brewers. At the time, he wasn’t sure if he would even be attractive to his hometown team, but he’s happy it worked out how it did.

“Yeah, the Rangers have been my team for a long time,” Milner said via Zoom. “All things considered, just being at home and playing for a team that's got the ability to win a World Series, there's just no better time to come play for the Rangers. I thought it would be very hard to pass up this opportunity.”

Milner, who turns 34 in January, is a native of Fort Worth, Texas, and was a seventh-round Draft selection by the Phillies out of the University of Texas in 2012. After posting a 2.01 ERA in a strong debut season with Philadelphia in 2017, he was traded to the Rays midway through the '18 campaign.

Milner made just eight appearances with Tampa Bay before signing with the Angels ahead of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. He struggled to an 8.10 ERA over 19 appearances for the Halos. He then signed with the Brewers that offseason.

In Milwaukee, Milner found his form, particularly in 2023, when he posted a 1.82 ERA over 73 appearances. He was unable to replicate that type of success last season, however, pitching to a 4.73 ERA over 61 outings.

Milner's underlying metrics showed that he was somewhat unlucky in 2024 -- his expected ERA was nearly a run and a half lower than his actual ERA, at 3.24, and he was among the top 10% of qualifying pitchers in walk rate (5.2%, 92nd percentile), barrel rate (2.7%, 99th percentile) and ground ball rate (53.7%, 91st percentile).

“This year, a lot of balls were finding holes, whereas the year before they found gloves,” Milner said. “You could argue the year before, I was very lucky, and then last year, I was very unlucky, and they might balance themselves out over time. But I don't think much changed with pitch usage, pitch selection, all that stuff, it was all pretty much the same. You look at my underlying numbers, they are all pretty much the same. I think it was a lot of bad luck.

“I think I'll be doing pretty much the same thing I did two years ago and the same thing I did last year. Obviously we'll look over things and tweak things here and there, and we'll dive deep into stuff and see what we need to adjust. But it shouldn't be too much different.”

Milner’s addition is yet another step toward building out the Rangers’ bullpen for 2025. Texas lost four relievers -- Kirby Yates, David Robertson, José Leclerc and Andrew Chafin -- to free agency this offseason. Swingman right-hander José Ure?a, who threw 109 innings, joined them.

There are still a lot of question marks for Texas -- the biggest being who will close out games in 2025 -- as the new year approaches, but president of baseball operations Chris Young and his crew continue to make incremental moves to improve the club.

Young has said the Rangers were going to be creative in how they decided to build out a lot of the pitching staff, whether that was signings, trades or waiver claims. The two recent additions -- Webb and Milner -- were both non-tendered by their previous clubs before signing with Texas.

“We’re just looking to make our bullpen better,” Young said at the Winter Meetings earlier this month. “We are looking to improve our bullpen in a number of ways: middle relief, leverage, lefties, righties. We have holes, and we're going to continue to address those holes. We had a number of great conversations with agents and with teams [at Winter Meetings]. We will continue to find the right pieces."