Texas Rangers happy to have draft picks but aren’t sure how to develop them this year
By the time Thursday ended, the Texas Rangers were to have selected five prospects in the MLB draft who were a financial agreement away from launching their professional careers.
Ordinarily, there would have been 40, with around 25-30 signing contracts. Ordinarily, they would have been shipped to Arizona to get their feet wet before landing their first minor-league assignments.
These aren’t ordinary times, of course, with baseball shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.
There will be a 2020 MLB season in some way, shape or form, commissioner Rob Manfred said, but chances of a minor-league season are all but gone.
The five players selected by the Rangers, as well as the undrafted free agents who can begin signing Sunday, have nowhere to go along with the minor-leaguers already in the system.
Player development 2020 is out of the ordinary, too.
“I’m hopeful that there will be some sort of organized player-development program. When I say organized I mean that the league will put something together for all 30 clubs,” general manager Jon Daniels said last week. “These guys would be priorities for us.”
The Rangers selected Mississippi State second baseman Justin Foscue on Wednesday with their first-round pick (14th overall) in the five-round draft. Picks 2-5 followed Thursday.
Tennessee high school outfielder Evan Carter was the club’s second-round pick at No. 50 overall, and nabbed Florida prep right-hander Tekoah Roby in the third round at No. 86 overall. Dylan MacLean, a prep left-hander from Oregon, went in the fourth round with the 115th overall pick, and the Rangers capped their draft by selecting a fourth straight high school player, California shortstop Thomas Saggese, in the fifth round at No. 145 overall.
The Carter selection caught the ESPN analysts off-guard, with one admitting that he had never heard of Carter. Others tempered the surprise selections by saying the Rangers are known risk-takers in the draft.
All four, though, are players who the Rangers believe would have been highly touted had there been a complete spring baseball season or would develop into elite players in college.
Carter is athletic, having also played football, and at 6-foot-4 there is room for him to add muscle to his frame. Roby’s fastball tops out at 94 mph.
Each has a college commitment that could affect the Rangers’ ability to sign them. Carter signed with Duke, Roby with Troy, MacLean with Washington and Saggese with Pepperdine. Carter said he will sign with the Rangers.
“A lot of these kids we took today that you saw weren’t like the top prospects on all the lists, so to speak,” said Kip Fagg, the Rangers’ director of amateur scouting. “We feel like we got a good group of kids that would have popped if the spring played out like a normal spring.”
Foscue said that he has been working out with a personal trainer in addition to traditional baseball activities. Players who are self-starters, one of the qualities that endeared Foscue to the Rangers, will have a leg up when things return to normal.
College players, though, have a little more polish and will move faster toward the major leagues. The prep players are still growing and will be thrust into a whole new world away from home for the first time.
The good news for the Rangers, and the other 29 MLB teams, is they have already adapted to distant player development. Players have been given programs for staying in shape at home, and the Rangers’ facility in Surprise, Arizona, has reopened to limited workouts.
“The job our player-development group has done with the virtual development and some of the tools that we’ve put in place, quite frankly I think some of them are really good and we’re going to continue to use them in the future,” Daniels said. “I think they are going to become part of our regular program.
“Like everybody has, you’ve figured out some things that are really good and efficient and productive that maybe we weren’t doing beforehand. Same thing on the development side.”
The players drafted this week and those who will be signed beginning Sunday won’t be left behind their new teammates.
“I think we’ll be able to provide them with some resources right away, even if it takes a little time after the draft to bring them in,” Daniels said. “And these guys haven’t been playing. They’ve been working out on the side.
“Even if we got the green light, just from a health and safety standpoint, there would be a period of time we’d need to ramp them up and do some assessments before we really rolled them out. I’m hopeful we’ll be able to do that for them this fall.”
This story was originally published June 11, 2020 at 5:08 PM.
