The Rangers could be leading the division for 100 consecutive days (and counting, as they are now), or it could be a year in which they’re about to wholly cede market share to Cowboys training camp, and it wouldn’t matter. The fan base would still be voicing its time-honored, mantra-level whinge:
When is this franchise going to start developing its own pitching?
This year, at least, it’s a justifiable question. Onetime system bellwethers Jack Leiter and Cole Winn have failed to quiet concerns. Kumar Rocker, whom the team made the fourth overall pick in last year’s draft despite a history of iffy medicals, underwent Tommy John surgery six starts into his pro career. But lost in that cacaphony was a different concern.
This is the franchise whose farm system produced Pudge and Juando and the Rubens (Sierra and, sigh, Mateo). Tex and Kins and Hank Blalock. It always has been viewed as a hitter factory that could never get the hang of turning minor-league pitchers into core big leaguers. But for more than a decade, there had been a noticeable dry spell..
Elvis Andrus, a frontline prospect who was an original Braves farmhand but didn’t reach Double-A until he landed with the Rangers, debuted with Texas in 2009. He spent the first 12 of what is now a 15-year major-league career with the club, amassing 29.8 of his 33.1 career WAR as a Ranger. What follows is a list of Rangers position-player prospects who have arrived in the 14 years since Andrus debuted and have produced at least 7.0 career WAR–that is, everyone who has amassed so much as 20 percent of Andrus’ output:
- Mitch Moreland (2010 debut): 10.8 WAR* (4.9 with Texas)
- Leonys Martin (2011 debut): 11.5 WAR (8.8 with Texas)
- Joey Gallo (2015 debut): 15.2 WAR (13.9 with Texas)
- Isiah Kiner-Falefa (2018 debut): 9.6 WAR* (7.1 with Texas)
* excludes mop-up innings on the mound
In related news, Texas missed the playoffs in eight of the previous 10 seasons. But the Rangers’ reputation as being a haven of the homegrown hitter could be gaining traction once again, and its return is one of the driving forces in their surge to the top of the A.L. West.
Leody Taveras, who debuted in 2020, is hitting the ball with considerably more authority than ever before and has helped create opportunities for big innings acting as a second leadoff hitter out of the nine-hole. Adolis Garcia made his Rangers debut in 2020 as well, going hitless in six at-bats. In the three years since, he has twice been an All-Star, and has made the leap to legitimate stardom in 2023 with his plate discipline–he already has 38 walks, nearly matching last year’s total of 40–and his overall production (an .860 OPS compared to .741 and .756 marks the last two seasons), he has become a legitimate star. Garcia is a little different from the others in that he had 17 forgettable at-bats (.118 batting average) with the Cardinals in 2018 before reemerging with the Rangers two years later in one of the great trades Jon Daniels made. But even though the Rangers weren’t the ones to first bring Garcia to the big leagues, they get full credit for unlocking him in such monumental fashion.
Similarly, catcher Jonah Heim broke in with Oakland, getting 38 at-bats in 2020 (.211, no extra-base hits) before coming to Texas in the February 2021 Andrus trade (after previously being traded by the Orioles and Rays in smaller deals). But what Heim has done as a Ranger–elevating his OPS from .598 to .697 to its present .824 while playing elite defense–is not anything Baltimore, Tampa Bay, or Oakland would have any claim to.
Josh Jung hit 19 home runs this season before the All-Star break, which he spent in Seattle as the American League’s starting third baseman. Ezequiel Duran, who like Jung arrived in 2022–and who, as Andrus did, joined Texas through a trade while still in Class A–has an even higher OPS (.859) than Jung (.816), not to mention exponentially more trade value and present value than Gallo, for whom he and three other Yankees prospects were shipped to the Rangers two summers ago.
You might argue (along with my editor Mike Piellucci) that Nathaniel Lowe gives Taveras, Garcia, Heim, Jung, and Duran company in this category, even though he had more than 200 at-bats with the Rays with a 108 OPS+, which is not quite Jung’s 120 but still an impressive mark for a player in his first four months in the league. I wouldn’t push back too much, either. He has an OPS of 125 as a Ranger (120 this year) and is an above-average, pre-arbitration hitter, not to mention the product of yet another productive Daniels trade made after the organization had transitioned from contending to rebuilding.
Do we credit hitting coach Tim Hyers, offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker, and assistant hitting coach Seth Conner, each hired before the 2022 season, for this resurgence? How about minor league hitting director Cody Atkinson, who has been around two years longer and who is in charge of helping Evan Carter, Wyatt Langford, Luisangel Acuna, Justin Foscue, Aaron Zavala, Thomas Saggese, Sebastian Walcott, Anthony Gutierrez, and friends form the next wave down on the farm?
Or do we give the top nod to Bruce Bochy, not so much for his Midas touch as for the steady hand and mental edge he might provide less experienced players by entrusting them full-throttle with roles to grow into?
The answer is they all probably have chipped in. But the key credit lies elsewhere. The players, of course, have come up big themselves. Coaching and trust can only do so much; have to execute, have to hit, have to adapt.
And that they have done. So much so in 2023 that the fanbase cries for more pitching are just as loud as ever, except this time they are less about bringing some up than about bringing some in. The only truly imaginable impact player the Rangers would think about adding to the offense before the August 1 trade deadline would be a guy who, I don’t know, could also be the ace of the staff. But we can talk about that another time.
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