Texas Rangers again rush a top prospect; this one looks like he can handle it
If the Texas Rangers are to return to relevancy in any our lifetimes, rather than compete with the Pittsburgh Pirates for the top pick in the MLB Draft, it starts not with Corey Seager or Marcus Semien.
A turnaround usually starts not with free agents but with young players. Young players just like Josh Jung.
Since the time he was a kid Jung has been groomed for this moment, and if anyone can handle what the Rangers are doing to him it’s the former Texas Tech third baseman.
On Thursday, Jung visited with the media for a few minutes in an empty Rangers’ clubhouse, one day before he’s scheduled to make his big league debut, on Friday night against Toronto at Globe Life Mall.
I asked him if he was nervous.
“Absolutely,” he said. “It’s everything I’ve been working towards my entire life.”
How charmingly candid.
He heard so much chatter about his pending promotion he admitted to deleting Twitter from his phone; good advice for all of us, not just MLB prospects.
The Rangers are high-stepping their way to a sixth-straight losing season, and need a GPS to find .500. This is after they committed more than $500 million in contracts last winter to a few free agents.
They fired their manager, Chris Woodward. They fired their looooooooooooong time GM and director of baseball operations, Jon Daniels.
They have a beautiful new stadium with air conditioning, and rank 18th in MLB in attendance.
Their last point of sale for this 2022 season is Jung, and the hope of what he could be.
He is the latest prospect this club is promoting in hopes of scoring not a single or a double, but a walk-off grand slam.
He is supposed to be the player Joey Gallo never quite became.
A strong case can be made that Gallo was rushed too soon, the same for Rougned Odor. That the rush to promote both players to the big league club adversely affected their respective growth.
The promotion of Jung, who was eighth overall pick by the Rangers in the 2019 MLB Draft, has some similarities to the day when the Rangers moved up Gallo, on June 2, 2015.
Gallo went 3-for-4 that day with a home run and 4 RBI.
There is one glaring difference between Gallo and Jung, and the respective situations they entered.
In 2015, the Rangers were not in a total rebuild. They won the American League West that season, and reached the playoffs.
Gallo was a 21-year-old, former high school player. As much as he did to disguise it, mentally he just was not ready for the Texas Rangers.
He needed more time to develop before a big league club asked him to be something he was not ready to carry at that stage of his life.
He may not have been wired for it ever, and maybe if the Rangers left him in the minors for another season he would have still become the same home run-or-nothing hitter he matured into at the big league level.
He also was not the only prospect of his era with the team who missed.
Gallo, Rougned Odor, Chi Chi Gonzalez, Ronald Guzman and Nomar Mazara were sold as the core of the next great Texas Rangers teams.
Their lack of development explain why the Rangers remain, in the words of owner Ray Davis, “not good.”
Jung is a 24-year-old who carried a college team that thrived in a power league before entering pro ball.
He is the rare case of the person who was groomed to play Major League Baseball from a young age, and actually made it.
There are countless cases of well-meaning parents, and some over-zealous ones, who spend every hour of the day, not to mention every dollar available, all in the prayer that their child may play college ball on a scholarship, and actually make it to the pros.
Josh Jung is that player.
He wasn’t exactly kidding when he said he’s been working for this promotion every day of his life.
When he suffered his torn labrum in his left shoulder back in February it was the best development for his 2022 season.
Had he not been hurt, the Rangers would have pushed him more and he would not have had the type of at bats, and success, he did at Double A Frisco this summer.
September ninth, 2022 feels like a good time to call him up. The Rangers are in fourth place in the AL West, 89 games* behind first place Houston (*figure approximate).
There is less than one month remaining in the regular season, and now is a good time to expose Jung to big league life, and big league pitching.
He doesn’t need to produce anything. He just needs to see what this is going to be like, and to prepare for life as the team’s everyday third baseman beginning in 2023.
Josh Jung says is he well aware of the hope desperate Rangers’ fans are pining on this promotion.
It’s unfair for a young player, but he was built for this moment.
This story was originally published September 8, 2022 at 4:06 PM.
