Explaining Tyler Alexander’s Career Breakthrough with Texas Rangers

Alexander was drafted in the second round of the 2015 MLB draft by the Detroit Tigers. He made his Major League debut in 2019 and his numbers before he joined the Rangers were average.

In 195 career games, with 57 starts, he was 22-42 with a 4.63 ERA. He had just one save. He struck out 445 and walked 128. He played for four different teams. He landed with Texas on a one-year deal worth barely more than $1 million coming off a 2025 in which he was 5-14 with a 4.98 ERA in 52 games with Milwaukee and the Chicago White Sox.

It would be right to argue that Alexander was adrift. The Rangers got him locked in.

He made a career-high 75 appearances. He went 5-2 with a 3.70 ERA, which was a career low. He struck out 60 and walked 23 in 73 innings. He even had four saves.

Why did this happen? Two things stand out.

First, he was a Statcast standout in three categories that are important for pitchers that don’t carry lots of velocity — barrel percentage (94th percentile, 4.0%), hard-hit percentage (86th percentile, 33.3%) and ground ball rate (88th percentile, 51.1%).

In easy terms, batters found his stuff hard to hit. When batters did make contact, they didn’t catch it square. When batters did catch it square it was usually a ground ball.

Second, his pitch mix is wild in an age where organizations chase velocity. His two most used pitches were his change-up (23%) and his cutter (21%). Neither topped 90 mph on average. The change-up averaged 84.7 mph and the cutter averaged 88.3 mph. Both were right on the league average for left-handers.

He combined that with a sinker (19%), a sweeper (18%) and a four-seam fastball (18%) to keep hitters off-balance. The ability to play his off-speed pitches off his fastball made his four-seamer a plus-offering to left-handed and right-handed hitters.

The pitch use is almost the inverse of 2025, when he threw his four-seamer 26% and his sweeper 22%. He only used his change-up 16% of the time.

Texas clearly asked him to emphasize the off-speed offerings to set up his four-seam fastball, and it worked. It made his 91.9 mph fastball more effective and gave him five effective pitches to use against hitters on both sides of the plate. It also made him one of the best free-agent signings for the Rangers in 2026 and a pitcher they should chase this offseason to re-sign.