Lance Lynn agrees to three-year, $30 million deal with Rangers

Lance Lynn is headed south after agreeing to a three-year, $30 million deal with the Texas Rangers, Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan confirmed on Wednesday.

Lynn joins the Rangers after playing out a one-year deal between the Minnesota Twins and New York Yankees in 2018 in which he posted a 4.77 ERA and 3.84 FIP in 156.2 innings. After signing a $12 million contract late in the offseason with the Twins, Lynn landed in New York in a midseason trade meant to bolster a struggling Yankees rotation.

The Rangers were also rumored to be after Charlie Morton, who ended up getting the same amount of cash in one fewer year than Lynn with the Tampa Bay Rays. Instead, it will be Lynn who will try to bolster a rotation that ranked second-worst in ERA among MLB teams with a 5.37 mark.

It’s quite something that Lynn was able to pull in three years and $30 million after a season in which he would have ranked among the bottom of the ERA leaderboards had he thrown enough innings to qualify. Lynn had to settle less than half that guaranteed money after throwing more innings with a 3.43 ERA in 2017, though that might be explained by some rough peripherals that year.

Lynn’s strikeout rate was a career-low 19.7 percent in 2017, but he ticked back up with a 23 percent rate in 2018. A pitcher that has always relied heavily on fastballs, Lynn operated outside the zone more than any season of his career and was rewarded with an uptick in whiffs, but that came at a cost of a career-high 10.9 percent walk rate.

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