After being 'humbled' in '24, Dunning eyes bounceback year

SURPRISE, Ariz. -- A big part of Dane Dunning's offseason was trying to get more sleep, which is admittedly a difficult feat considering he has an almost 2-year-old and another child on the way.

But that was one of many things he felt he needed to do to get his body right.

¡°My energy levels are really high now, I feel really good,¡± Dunning said. ¡°I cleaned up a lot of my eating this offseason. I think I dropped about 4% or 5% body fat and gained about 5% muscle. I've been doing a lot of recovery stuff, just some red-light therapies and trying to accumulate as much sleep as I can. There were a lot of bad, negative things that I kind of did last year. I just tried to erase that from history and get myself back on the right foot.¡±

Dunning said the change in his routine was partly from the coaching staff and partly of his own volition. He knew he could be better than he was in 2024. It was up to him to make that happen.

But his 2024 wasn¡¯t all bad to begin with. He opened the season in the rotation, posting a 3.94 ERA across his first nine starts. But he landed on the injured list with a right rotator cuff strain on May 8, and went back on July 5 with shoulder soreness. And his ERA only got worse and worse from there.

On Sept. 1, Dunning was optioned to Triple-A for the first time in his Texas tenure, and he finished with a 5.31 ERA in 95 innings in the big leagues.

Dunning said he felt like issues with his entire body -- not just the shoulder that landed him on the injured list twice -- contributed to his struggles on the mound. His stride was longer, he was showing the ball sooner, the velocity was down and he wasn¡¯t commanding the ball as well as he typically does.

He did everything the Rangers asked of him to try to fix all those things.

¡°I'll say this about Dane,¡± said manager Bruce Bochy. ¡°He's a pretty good self-evaluator. He was a good listener. I think he was honest with himself about where he was with his stuff, and knew that he had to do some things to get back to where he needs to be. ¡­ He's worked hard this offseason. He's lost some weight and got himself in really good condition. Sometimes you get humbled and that makes you work a little bit harder. I think that's the case with Dane.¡±

So the offseason was about getting him back to where he was in 2023.

Dunning was the Rangers' Pitcher of the Year in 2023, when he posted a 3.70 ERA across 172 2/3 innings as a swingman for the eventual World Series champs. He also won the award in 2021 as a rookie, shortly after being the main piece of the offseason trade that sent Lance Lynn to the White Sox.

The Rangers need that version of him in order to be successful in 2025.

Dunning will almost definitely end up somewhere in the bullpen equation in 2025, likely as a long reliever. The right-hander thrived in relief in early 2023, posting a 1.77 ERA in 20 1/3 innings before joining the rotation in May when Jacob deGrom underwent Tommy John surgery.

¡°He¡¯s a guy that can give us innings, and also depth,¡± Bochy said. ¡°We've seen what he can do going from the bullpen to starting and back to the bullpen, and it's pretty valuable. That's what we're hoping to see. The Dane of ¡®23 was probably our most valuable pitcher. He can help us get outs in that bullpen. He's resilient. Sometimes you have to take the ball from him, because he's always going to say, ¡®I'm good to go.¡¯¡±