FORT WORTH, Texas -- The Texas Rangers have reached an agreement on a one-year deal worth about $4 million with free-agent right-hander Jason Jennings.
The agreement was confirmed late Wednesday night by two people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because no announcement had been made. The team could announce the deal as early as Thursday.
Jennings, a former first-round pick who was the National League's Rookie of the Year in 2002 while with Colorado, was 2-9 in 19 games for Houston last season. He missed nearly three months because of a torn flexor tendon in his right elbow.
Jennings is a Dallas native who played at Baylor University before the Rockies took him with the 16th overall pick in the 1999 amateur draft.
The addition of Jennings comes less than a month after the Rangers traded Edinson Volquez, one of their top pitching prospects who was a candidate for the rotation. Volquez was traded to Cincinnati for center fielder Josh Hamilton.
Jennings spent six years in Colorado, going 4-1 in seven starts at the end of the 2001 season in his major-league debut. He then went 16-8 with a 4.52 ERA in 32 starts in 2002.
Colorado traded Jennings to Houston in December 2006 as part of a five-player deal that sent outfielder Willy Taveras to the Rockies.
In 175 major-league games, all but one of them starts, Jennings has a 60-65 record with a 4.91 ERA.
The rest of the Rangers rotation includes Kevin Millwood, Vicente Padilla, Brandon McCarthy and Kason Gabbard, the 25-year-old left-hander who came from Boston last summer in the trade for closer Eric Gagne.
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