DALLAS (AP) – The Texas Rangers acquired infielder and hard-hitting corner Jake Berger from the Miami Marlins on Wednesday in a trade for three minor league players.
Berger played in 137 games for the Marlins last season, hitting .250 with 29 home runs and 76 RBIs, with 150 strikeouts and 31 walks in 535 at-bats. He started 59 games at third base and 50 games at first base. He is five days short of service to be eligible for salary arbitration this offseason, but could become eligible next winter and become a free agent after the 2028 World Series.
Miami acquired infielders Max Acosta and Echedry Vargas, as well as left-handed pitcher Brian Mendoza.
Berger’s acquisition comes about a month after the Rangers hired former Marlins manager Skip Shoemaker as a senior advisor for baseball operations. Luis Urueta, Miami’s bench coach for the past two seasons, also recently joined coach Bruce Bochy’s 2025 on-field coaching staff.
Berger was selected 11th overall by the Chicago White Sox out of Missouri State University in the 2017 amateur draft and made his major league debut in 2021. He was traded to Miami at the trade deadline for the 2023 season and hit .250 with 34 hits. He hit a home run and had 80 RBIs in 141 games.
“He’s a hard hitter and makes a lot of hard contact,” Bochy said. “We’re excited to have him. He’s going to help make our offense better and get us back to where it was a few years ago, and he’s going to be one of the elite offenses in this game, and he’s going to help us get back to where we were a few years ago.” He will be a part of it.”
Berger hit 22 home runs from July 1 to the end of last season, and during this period, he surpassed Shohei Ohtani (28) of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who was unanimously named MVP of the National League, and Eugenio Suarez of Arizona State ( That was the third-most in the National League, behind only 24 years old).
Texas hit .238 this year with 176 home runs and an average of 4.2 RBIs per game. All of these statistics were significantly reduced compared to the 2023 World Series championship season, when the Rangers averaged 5.4 points per game, a .263 batting average, and 233 home runs.
Bochy said Berger will play first base as a designated hitter and could also play third base in some games.
Nathaniel Rowe, the Rangers’ primary first baseman, won the Silver Slugger Award in 2022 by hitting .302 and won the Gold Glove Award that World Series season. Last season, he hit .265 with 16 home runs and 69 RBIs.
Third baseman Josh John was selected as a 2023 All-Star starter as a rookie, but broke his right wrist after being hit by a pitch on April 1 of this year. In the first four games, he had 7 hits for 17 at bats, 2 home runs, 6 RBIs, and 5 RBIs. He missed a season’s worth of games before the injury and remained on the disabled list until the end of July, missing 102 games. He finished the season with a .264 batting average, seven home runs, and 16 RBIs in 46 games, but returned to the IL due to wrist tendinitis and missed the final week.
Acosta, 22, batted .288 in 104 games for Double-A Frisco, starting 65 games at shortstop and 36 at second base this year. Vargas, 19, is Class A Downeast’s primary shortstop, while Mendoza, 20, is 5-4 with a 2.32 ERA and 109 strikeouts in 101 innings with two Class A teams.
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