Texas Rangers keeping Alex Speas’ 102-mph fastball was biggest Rule 5 development
A busy Thursday saw the Texas Rangers acquire the player they anticipate will be their starting first baseman in a six-player deal with the Tampa Bay Rays, only a few hours after the always scintillating Rule 5 draft.
As always, or at least it seems that way, the Rangers selected a player with the second pick of the Rule 5. Right-hander Brett de Geus, not ex-Rays first baseman Nate Lowe, was the first addition to the 40-man roster.
The de Geus pick, though, doesn’t rate as the biggest Rangers news of the Rule 5 draft.
No team risked selecting Alex Speas, the hard-throwing righty reliever who was the Rangers’ top candidate to be selected. So, he and his 102-mph fastball will stay put, and the work will continue on getting him to the major leagues.
And he isn’t close, otherwise some team would have plucked him and tried to sneak him through the season on its active roster.
That was part of the equation as the Rangers juggled the risk of leaving Speas unprotected for the Rule 5 draft and the number of roster spots they wanted to use to protect minor-leaguers. That number was three — catcher David Garcia and right-handers A.J. Alexy and Yerry Rodriguez.
But not Speas, whose velocity wouldn’t have been able to hide his flaws for a full season.
The Rangers, though, still believe in the 2016 second-rounder, who underwent Tommy John surgery 2018, clocked 102 during rehab appearances in 2019 and was part of the Rangers’ 60-player pool for the 2020 season.
Speas’ best secondary pitch is a slider, which has flashed above-average. He has a potentially lethal two-pitch mix, and the Rangers could have an elite, affordable back-of-the-bullpen reliever for years to come if he can corral his control.
“I think he’s a big-league pitcher,” president of baseball operations Jon Daniels said. “He’s obviously got that talent. There are adjustments that need to be made, just like anybody.
“He doesn’t ever need to be a guy who dots is up perfectly. I think if he’s in and around the zone with he’s power mix, he’s going to be very successful. We’ll work with him this offseason, then we’ll bring him into big-league camp and continue to work with him, and then hope this is the season he makes it.”
That might be asking a lot for a pitcher who has never been in games higher than Low A. It wouldn’t be unheard of for the Rangers to push a reliever through multiple levels to the majors in one season, as they did in 2019 with Emmanuel Clase.
However, Clase had control. He threw too many strikes on occasion. Speas doesn’t throw nearly enough strikes, and was upside down in the strike-to-ball ratio during summer camp.
But he was at summer camp, getting attention many others didn’t in a year without a minor-league season. He will be in big-league spring training, getting more hands-on time alongside guys who have had to figure out the things Speas must to reach the majors.
De Geus moved closer to his MLB debut Thursday. He isn’t oozing experience either, having never pitched above High A in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ system, but he was sharp at two A-ball levels in 2019 before a dominant stint in the Arizona Fall League.
He can cover multiple innings, which is something the Rangers will attempt to stockpile in their 2021 bullpen to protect against young starters who are either on an innings limit or who get lit up early in a start.
Daniels said that de Geus had a slight velocity drop when he pitched at the Dodgers’ alternate-camp site in 2020, from the mid-90s to the low-90s, but in the year of a COVID-19 shutdown it didn’t raise any red flags.
“He’s not alone in that regard,” Daniels said. “Depending upon what guys had to work with facility-wise and program-wise, some guys were in better spots than others. ... It’s not surprising that someone might have a tick down in velocity, but we’re hopeful with a normal off-season and spring training and able to get his strength back that his velocity will pick back up.”
