The Texas Rangers signed reliever Jakob Junis to a one-year deal with a mutual option for 2027. The Rangers may regret making it a mutual option.
Junis became Texas’ most relied-up set-up man from the right side, as he went 1-3 with a 3.64 ERA in 53 games. He had 18 holds and six saves in eight chances. He struck out 38, walked 18 and allowed batters to hit .242 against him in 54.1 innings.
The only thing that held him back from a better season was injuries. He suffered a left hip impingement in July and then followed that with a left adductor strain. In all, he missed about a month.
Junis’ mutual option is for $4.5 million. Junis could have a better market in free agency this season. One stat explains why.
Jakob Junis’ Most Valuable Asset in 2026
Junis has always been a reliever that limits his walks. For his career he’s walked 234 hitters in 901.1 innings. He walks approximately one hitter every four innings. That’s the kind of ratio just about any team will take.
In that regard, he had another great season. He walked 18 batters — same as in 2025 — and in 12 fewer innings. But per Statcast, his walk rate of 7.7% was just in the 61st percentile in baseball. There was something he did better, and it’s part of the reason he emerged as the Rangers’ top set-up option.
When a batter “barrels” a baseball, it is contact with an exit velocity of at least 98 mph and a launch angle of 26 to 30 degrees. That’s considered optimal, high-damage contact, and that goes into how pitchers get a barrel percentage, or the number of times a hitter does that against a pitcher.
Per Statcast, Junis had a barrel percentage of 3.5%, or in the 97th percentile in baseball, per Statcast. It was his best MLB percentile ranking of the season.
To excel at that you need to get hitters to make soft contact and Junis has an arsenal equipped to do that. He leans heavily into a sweeper that he threw 43% of the time last season and only averaged 82.1 mph. But that sweeper came with a lot of induced break, and paired with a change-up that averaged 86.8 mph and thrown 20% of the time, hitters had a hard time making hard contact.
It’s why Junis didn’t need a high chase rate or whiff rate. He only threw his fastball 19% of the time and it only averaged 92.3 mph, well below the 95.3 average for a right-handed pitcher. With the action of his sweeper and change up, soft contact was all he needed to get outs.
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