2022 Uniform Numbers

Today is 14 Mar 2022, and today is the first official day of Spring Training – after being delayed by the big CBA lockout.  This also means the Rangers have a proper roster available with uniform numbers, so when I got my hands on it a few hours ago, I instantly stopped watching Star Trek and jumped into editing uniform numbers for first day of Spring Training.  As is my custom, I’m making a post here to mark this as well as a new notes and comments I noticed while editing all the pages here.

Here’s a link to all the data, but before that, a summary of what I learned doing the 2022 start of Spring Training data.

New Guys

Here’s some numbers for the major acquisitions during the offseason (such that it was)

• 2 – Marcus Semien
• 5 – Corey Seager
• 18 – Mitch Garver
• 22 – Jon Gray
• 36 – Nick Tropeano
• 56 – Cole Calhoun

Number Changes

Usually there’s a player who has been here for a bit who moves their number around, and this spring is no different here.

• Willie Calhoun goes from 5 to 4
• Josh Jung goes from 70 to 6
• Dennis Santana goes from 56 to 19
• John King goes from 60 to 32
• DeMarcus Evans goes from 67 to 58
• AJ Alexy goes from 75 to 62
• Charlie Culbertson goes from 2 to 11

Not Assigned

Some years ago when Zack Minasian was our clubhouse guy, I remember hearing him say in an interview somewhere that when a popular or long standing player leaves the team for whatever reason (FA signing, trade, retire) they generally did not give out that number for at least one full season afterwards (unless there’s some roster squeeze in the spring). That continues into 2022 with the following numbers not being assigned this spring when they were last season (well, mostly last season):

• 1 – Elvis Andrus
• 9 – IKF
• 17 – Shin-Soo Choo
• 20 – Mike Foltynewicz
• 21 – David Dahl
• 24 – Jordan Lyles
• 50 – Jason Martin

Longest Consecutive

Also as I do every year, I keep track of who has held their uniform number the longest.  Keep in mind this is not tenure with the team in general – just “tenure with their current uniform number”.

The longest consecutively ACTIVE held uniform number going into this year is now a five way tie.  Chris Woodward (8), Nick Solak (15), Jose LeClerc (25), Kolby Allard (39), and Brett Martin (59) have all held their respective numbers now for four consecutive seasons going into 2022 (all of them starting at some point in the 2019 season).

Technically the longest held is Josh Frasier, the bullpen catcher, who has worn #66 since 2005, and assuming he’s here in 2022 (I haven’t officially gotten word of that yet for 2022) he would have worn it for 18 seasons.  I’m not counting Rangers Captain who has worn #72 since 2003.  Neither of these guys are proper rostered players or coaches, so they’re not being counted as longer than the five way tie above.

As a note, the prior record holder was Joey Gallo with 7.  It would have been Rougned Odor with 8, but he was cut loose during spring training 2021, and didn’t get his number 12 into the regular season last year.

General Notes

• Meibrys Viloria (#60) will be the best name to hear people mispronounce on the roster.
• #69 remains the only number never to be handed to anyone under any condition. ;)

Summary

There is one thing I was hoping fans could help me by contributing. If you’ve ever looked at my uniform number history pages, I’ve gathered over the years pictures of the various numbers being worn on players. I’ve posted some of them on the bottom of each number’s page as an “example” of that number. The Julio Borbon picture here is one of those. But check out the pages, and look at the bottom. I think it makes for a nice little archive of pictures.