Whatever magic the 2023 Texas Rangers conjured up to make their World Series-winning postseason run despite being the fifth seed in the American League seemed to completely dissipate when the calendar turned over to 2024. The roster was largely the same, they hammered out an Adolis García before arbitration, they still had Bruce Bochy at the helm — but they finished under .500 and eight games out of a Wild Card spot this season.

The Rangers front office is almost certainly scrambling. They can’t exactly tear down the entire team and rebuild when they just spent millions on Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and Jacob deGrom (among others) just a few years ago, but they are barreling toward their third year of luxury tax penalties and just came off of a bad season.

Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News reported that one of the Rangers’ priorities for the offseason is to get under the $241 million luxury tax threshold to avoid escalating penalties. They spent around $250.5 million this year. Texas has a number of players hitting free agency, but they also have a few potentially very expensive players they’ll have to pay to avoid arbitration.

So where do you shave off the money? Dodgers fans jumped on the news out of Arlington, calling for a homecoming for Dodgers’ 2016 Rookie of the Year and 2020 NLCS MVP Corey Seager.

Dodgers fans might be getting ahead of themselves with calls to bring Corey Seager back as Rangers look to cut spending

Unless the Dodgers plan on making Miguel Rojas their everyday shortstop next year, they do need a full-time shortstop in 2025. Tommy Edman is likely to keep moving all over the field, and Rojas, who will be 36 when the 2025 season starts, isn’t really a solution. Getting Seager back would mean that the Dodgers would be rectifying their mistake of letting him go in 2022.

However, it feels unlikely that the Rangers will let go of Seager (or Semien or García or even deGrom, for that matter), and there’s also the issue of whether or not he’d even be willing to come back to the Dodgers. His deal includes a limited no-trade clause with eight teams listed; although those teams are unknown, it does seem that there were some hurt feelings between him and the Dodgers when they chased Trea Turner as their shortstop of the future instead of Seager (only to lose Turner a year later).

The Dodgers are more likely to finally try to tempt Willy Adames over to LA. Getting Seager back would be nice for fans, but it’s long seemed like both parties have fully gone separate ways.