In part 1 of this series, which covered the bottom quarter of my top 72 prospects in the Rangers system, I had only three players jump onto the list after being unranked (but in the organization) last May, while in this installment there are four. Maybe that’s confirmation that I either didn’t know what I was talking about in the spring or don’t know now or that the four in this grouping had really interesting breakouts in 2022.
Advertisement
They aren’t the only ones who made seismic, Chutes and Ladders moves. The player I had ranked 72nd eight months ago has outpaced early expectations and now nearly cracks the top 40. Meanwhile, a 24-, 25-, and 26-year-old each drop roughly 30 spots.
Blame me for the spikes if you want. I’m the guy who originally had Bubba Thompson 12th as a first-round draft pick and bumped him a year later up to 2nd, only to shift him down after that to 10th and then 8th before a precipitous fall to 25th. Then the toolsy outfielder worked his way back up to 16th and 17th – 11 weeks after which he was a major leaguer and one of the Rangers’ 2022 bright spots. But that’s just how it goes sometimes. A player’s path to the big leagues is rarely linear. Those who hit a wall at a level often figure it out, and for others the opposite fate awaits. Health swings cloud evaluations, too.
The second player I profile in today’s rankings was once a regular in my top 10. Maybe he’ll get back there. He’s going to need a massive breakout in 2023 to do it, though. It’s something scouts will tell you he’s capable of, but the exit velo on the hourglass sand is picking up.
Following up on last week’s rundown of the No. 72 through No. 55 Rangers prospects, here are Nos. 54 through No. 37 — and this time, thanks to a Twitter suggestion, with season-opening ages.
54. Jake Latz, LHP, Triple-A Round Rock (Age on April 1: 26)
Round 5/2017 (-30)
For a third straight winter, the Rangers left Latz off the 40-man roster even though he was eligible for the Rule 5 Draft, and now they’ll risk losing him to free agency if he’s not on the roster when the 2023 season ends. The organization got a free one-start look at him in August 2021 when Dane Dunning went on the COVID-19 Injured List, but since then Latz’s Triple-A work has regressed. In 33 Round Rock innings in 2021, the Pacific Coast League hit .242 off the lefty and walked 4.4 times per nine innings. Last year, those numbers jumped to .284 and 5.3 and he was homer-prone, allowing 12 in 53 innings en route to a .900 opponents’ OPS. Latz logged most of those innings before a three-month shutdown in June with shoulder issues, and on his return, he worked strictly in relief for the first time in his pro career. He should return to the Express this spring for what could be a final chance to earn a second shot in the majors with Texas.
Advertisement
53. Chris Seise, SS, High-A Hickory (24)
Round 1/2017 (-31)
Like Latz, Seise can be a free agent after the 2023 season, and it seems like a probable outcome at this point. Taken three picks after Thompson in 2017’s first round, Seise was viewed as the more polished of the two and with just as much upside. In the years since, I’ve had more than one club official pinpoint him as the most talented prospect in the organization, but a rash of major injuries has defined his career to this point. The latest was a knee injury that limited him to 10 games in 2021. Texas eased him back into action in 2022, using him as a DH for the first two months of Hickory’s season before gradually mixing in shortstop assignments. Seise played in only 93 games for the Crawdads but it more than doubled his career workload. After three straight seasons with Hickory, he could begin the year in Frisco even though he managed only a .703 OPS in 2022. A breakout is always possible given the upside, but time is running out.
52. Robby Ahlstrom, LHP, High-A Hickory (23)
Trade with Yankees/2022 (-8)
Ahlstrom came over from the Yankees in last April’s Jose Trevino trade despite not having pitched professionally, having been shut down by New York after signing as a seventh-round pick out of the University of Oregon in 2021. The surface numbers weren’t pretty — the 23-year-old went 2-10 with a 5.04 ERA in 89 1/3 innings split between Low A and High A in 2022 — but he struck out 106 while walking only 31. Ahlstrom, who was teammates with Rangers outfield prospect Aaron Zavala at Oregon, is likely to return to Hickory this spring to continue making starts.
51. Tim Brennan, RHP, Double-A Frisco (26)
Round 7/2018 (+1)
Brennan has been the pitcher the Rangers scouted when they made him their seventh-round pick out of St. Joseph’s University in 2018: an elite strike-thrower with enough movement to keep the fat part of the bat off the ball. The right-hander had the lowest walk rate in the NCAA in his draft year and has maintained that profile professionally, exhibiting the best control in the organization. He walked only 14 in his 2019 debut over 124 1/3 innings between Low-A Down East and High-A Hickory in 2019. He pitched only 26 innings in 2021, sidelined for most of the year after breaking his forearm on a line drive back to the mound, but he was back in form in 2022, issuing a stingy 13 walks in 75 innings for Frisco (two or fewer in all 13 starts and six relief appearances). Downward roster pressure could have Brennan back with the RoughRiders to start 2023.
50. Anthony Hoopii-Tuionetoa, RHP, Low-A Down East (22)
Round 30/2019 (+4)
Advertisement
It’s been far from a normal progression for Hoopii-Tuionetoa. After deciding not to sign out of high school as the Twins’ 16th-round pick in 2018, he was planning to pitch for Yavapai Community College in Arizona but shifted gears, playing instead for Pierce College in Washington. After one season with the Raiders (4-3, 4.17 ERA in 10 appearances), Hoopii-Tuionetoa fell to Texas in the 30th round but signed for $125,000 — $25,000 more than Minnesota had offered him the year before. The Rangers kept him off a mound that summer, and then he was back home in Hawaii in 2020 with the minor leagues shut down that year. He finally made his pro debut in 2021, and in two seasons he has established himself as a prospect out of the bullpen. He held the Arizona Complex League to a .214 batting average in 2021 and the Carolina League to a .229 clip last year, striking out 14 batters per nine innings combined, featuring a mid-90s fastball with elite vertical run and a slider he gets hitters to chase. He should start the year in Hickory’s bullpen.
49. Yerry Rodriguez, RHP, Texas Rangers (25)
International/2015 (-15)
Rodriguez had mixed results for the first time in his career in 2021 and did little to put those behind him in 2022. He’d posted a 2.63 ERA in 14 Frisco starts in 2021, suppressing Double-A offense across the board (.205 batting average, .582 OPS, 63 strikeouts and 21 walks in 51 1/3 innings), but after a promotion to Triple A that August, he gave up 20 runs in four starts over 15 2/3 innings and was moved to the Round Rock bullpen, where his mid-90s fastball played up and produced better results. Back with the Express in 2022, he worked in relief all year and maintained his strikeout rate but walked nearly five batters per nine innings, twice his career rate. The 25-year-old’s command issues limited him to one major-league appearance at season’s end. With one option remaining in 2023, Rodriguez is a prime candidate to shuttle between Round Rock and Arlington as needed but he’ll need to refind the strike zone to earn those opportunities.
48. Nick Snyder, RHP, Triple-A Round Rock (27)
Round 19/2017 (-17)
Though his walk rate was not as problematic as Rodriguez’s, Snyder’s uncharacteristic regression in control kept him in Round Rock for almost all of 2022 and led Texas to non-tender him after the season despite the fact he had two options left. The Rangers’ Minor League Reliever of the Year in 2021 — when he blitzed all the way from High A to the majors — started 2022 back in Triple A but was recalled in mid-April when Dennis Santana was sidelined with COVID-19. After one scoreless outing, Snyder entered in the eighth inning of a game against the Angels, walked their seventh and eighth hitters and allowed the ninth hitter to single on an 0-2 count. He was optioned to Round Rock and never returned. In five minor-league seasons, Snyder has fanned 11 batters per nine innings and walked three. Though he’s made only six big-league appearances, the rates are flipped (1.9 strikeouts and 11.6 walks), and though it’s an obviously insignificant sample, Snyder clearly lost the trust of the team. The Rangers haven’t given up on him — they re-signed him in December after dropping him from the roster — but there are others ahead of him now.
47. Daniel Mateo, OF, High-A Hickory (21)
International/2019 (+1)
For all the risk that baseball’s amateur draft presents, the hit rate on the international landscape is an even wilder ride. The Rangers opened the 2018-19 J2 period by paying $2 million to 16-year-old Venezuelan catcher Jose Rodriguez, who soon moved off the position and hasn’t hit much as a pro. They spent $425,000 the same day on Luisangel Acuña, considered at the time a curiosity given that his brother Ronald was in the midst of a Rookie of the Year season that also fetched MVP votes. Then, just before that year’s signing period closed nearly 11 months later, Texas signed Mateo, a slightly built outfielder who hadn’t generated much buzz, for a mere $25,000. After a solid Dominican Summer League debut in 2019 in which he hit .294 and played a standout center field, the Rangers pushed him in 2021 with a stateside run in the Complex League that led to an August promotion to Low-A Down East just a month after his 20th birthday. Mateo was very good for a month, hitting.320 before fading late (.132 over the final three weeks), and Baseball America identified him as the system’s biggest sleeper. He returned to the Wood Ducks to start 2022, and his batting and on-base numbers were similar to his production the summer before. But with added size and strength, he also started to power balls out of the park. After hitting three home runs in his first two pro seasons, Mateo homered 11 times in 98 Down East games last year (and stole 42 bases), earning a late-season promotion to High-A Hickory. He’s likely to return to the Crawdads’ outfield in 2023.
Advertisement
46. Cody Freeman, C/IF, High-A Hickory (22)
Round 4/2019 (+9)
For the second straight season, the Rangers moved Freeman between catcher and third base with a little added infield work mixed in. But he worked primarily behind the plate as the organization continued to evaluate whether the lifelong infielder can play the position at the highest level. He improved his caught-stealing rate from 24 percent at Low A in 2021 to 29 percent with Hickory in 2022 and continued to display uncommon intangibles for someone who had never caught until the fall of 2020. Whether it was the grind of the defensive responsibilities or the higher-level pitching, Freeman’s batting average (.234) and walk rate (9 percent) took a dip in 2022 but his game power emerged, as he hit 13 home runs in 436 plate appearances after hitting just six in 377 career trips coming into the season. Freeman, whose brother Tyler was a rookie infielder with the Guardians in 2022, finished his year catching in the Arizona Fall League and will be in his first major-league camp this spring, having received a non-roster invite.
45. Tommy Specht, OF, Arizona Complex League (18)
Round 6/2022 (N/A)
The Rangers paid Specht $450,000 in a $314,400 slot to sway the outfielder from a commitment to Kentucky and then let him get his feet wet with a three-game debut in the Complex League and a run in Fall Instructs. He is likely to spend the early part of 2023 in extended spring training and repeat the assignment. Specht comes from the same Iowa high school as Rangers catcher prospect Ian Moller, and like Moller didn’t play baseball there as he finished his high school career. Specht played in a collegiate summer baseball league (after playing in the Perfect Game All-American Classic in 2021), where scouts envisioned the potential for left-handed power befitting a corner outfield spot as he fills out his 6-3 frame.
44. Josh Stephan, RHP, High-A Hickory (21)
Undrafted free agent/2020 (U/R)
When MLB shortened the 2020 draft to five rounds due to COVID-19, it resulted in an unprecedented crop of potential free agents, though the league capped signing bonuses at $20,000. Around baseball, 211 undrafted players signed deals, only 17 of whom were high school players — and Texas was particularly aggressive on that front, coming to terms with five. Curry, ranked No. 68 on this list, has made it pay off, but so far Stephan has been the real find. The South Grand Prairie product, who had committed to pitch at Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches, was solid in his 2021 debut between the Complex League and Low-A Down East, but even better between Down East and Hickory in 2022. He held batters to a .219 average and .651 OPS, striking out 115 in a durable 103 1/3 innings (eighth-most in the system) while walking only 31. Stephan throws two fastballs but is most effective with his two-seamer, pairing it with a slider he can throw for strikes or chase. Had he gone to college, this would be his draft year. Instead, he’s likely to start the spring back at Hickory, with a chance to reach Double A by the end of the summer.
43. Echedry Vargas, IF, Dominican Summer League (18)
International/2022 (U/R)
Advertisement
While the Rangers spent about 60 percent of their MLB-allotted $5,179,700 international budget last year on outfielders Anthony Gutierrez ($1,997,500) and Jose de Jesus ($1,197,500), they might have hit big with the $10,000 signing of Vargas. Signed at age 16, the bat-first infielder finished fifth in total bases in the 49-team Dominican Summer League (100 in 54 games), second in doubles (19) and ninth in triples (5) while hitting .301/.368/.510 with only 27 strikeouts in 223 plate appearances. The Rangers want Vargas to take more pitches, but there appears to be a lot of upside to work with. He’s likely to come stateside in 2023 and play in the Arizona Complex League.
42. JoJo Blackmon, OF, Low-A Down East (20)
Round 11/2021 (+30)
I’ve shared the story before about how a Rangers minor-league coach told me shortly after Blackmon was drafted and signed to an over-slot bonus that the Florida high school product, who was a standout football player with Division I offers to play wide receiver collegiately, didn’t have a favorite hitting drill … because he’d never done a hitting drill. Raw as they come, the outfielder nonetheless produced consistently loud exit velocities in 2022 — topping out at 111 mph — that led to an eye-opening nine home runs in 54 games between the Complex League and Low-A Down East. He posted an impressive .347 on-base percentage (more than 100 points higher than his batting average, which was dragged down by a high strikeout rate) and was also effective with a plus-plus speed tool that is best in the system, stealing 18 bases in 20 tries and flashing elite tools in center field. It was an exciting first full season for a player who is still learning the game.
41. Alejandro Osuna, OF, High-A Hickory (20)
International/2020 (U/R)
The Rangers haven’t had as much success in Mexico as other regions internationally, rarely spending big and getting less than hoped for when they have, as with pitchers Damian Mendoza ($1 million in 2017) and Florencio Serrano ($850,000 in 2018). Osuna, brother of former Blue Jays and Astros closer Roberto Osuna, is the latest hope to buck the trend. Signed for $125,000 in 2020, he was challenged with an eye-opening assignment to Low-A Down East to make his pro debut in 2021 at age 18. He held his own as one of the league’s youngest players, increasing his OPS each month of the season before finishing at .732. Returning to the Carolina League in 2022, Osuna made huge strides, hitting .308/.394/.451 and forcing a late-season promotion to High A. The left-handed-hitting outfielder played 142 games for the Wood Ducks in 2021 and 2022, the rough equivalent of a full season; over that span, he hit .272 with 14 home runs, 70 walks and 49 steals, though his running game is expected to be less of a factor as his body matures. He’s likely to return to Hickory this spring and won’t turn 21 until after the season.
40. Davis Wendzel, SS/3B/2B, Triple-A Round Rock (25)
Round 1/2019 (-28)
In its 2023 Prospect Handbook, Baseball America not only dropped Wendzel from the 30 Rangers prospects it profiled but went so far as to omit him from its 53-player depth chart for the club’s farm system. That’s probably a little rash, but Wendzel has had trouble staying out of the training room and has yet to find an offensive rhythm when he’s been healthy. The 2019 supplemental first-round pick out of Baylor — where he shared Big 12 Player of the Year honors with fellow Rangers first-rounder Josh Jung — has a mere 663 pro plate appearances, and over that stretch, he’s hit only .219/.314/.397. He has, however, hit 26 home runs and drawn 72 walks in that span – the rough equivalent of a season’s worth of reps – flashing the offensive upside that first attracted the Rangers, along with his ability to play all over the infield and possibly on an outfield corner as well. But hand, wrist and (in 2022) back injuries have prevented him from playing a full season, and at this point, that’s the unfortunate headline on his career.
Advertisement
39. Leandro Calderon, RHP, Dominican Summer League (20)
International/2021 (U/R)
The Rangers are on a year-to-year streak of unleashing a hard-throwing Dominican right-hander after having signed him for a mere $10,000. In 2021, it was Emiliano Teodo who broke out stateside. Last year, it was Winston Santos. This year, many anticipate Calderon will be the latest to bust onto the scene. A visa issue prevented him from pitching in the Arizona Complex League (if not Class A) in 2022, but that’s not expected to be a problem this season. He was dominant in the Dominican Summer League last year, striking out an astonishing 63 batters in 34 1/3 innings — no pitcher in the 49-team league punched hitters out at a greater rate — while scattering 15 hits (one home run) and 18 walks. Calderon’s mid-90s four-seamer features elite vertical movement that approaches 20 inches and he supplements it with a hammer curve that exceeds 3,000 rpm. The converted infielder will need to bring the walk numbers down, but the upside here is tremendous.
38. Luis Ramirez, RHP (21)
Round 7/2022 (N/A)
When Ramirez opened his junior season at Cal State Long Beach by no-hitting defending champion Mississippi State for six innings on the road after leading the Cape Cod League in strikeouts the summer before, buzz started to circulate that he could work his way into the top three rounds of the 2022 draft. But a shoulder injury ended his college season in late April after just seven starts, and the Rangers capitalized on his red-flagged status by taking him in the seventh round. Ramirez is a polished pitcher with quiet mechanics and command of two above-average offerings, a heavy 91-94 mph sinker and hammer curve. He’ll be 22 when the season starts and is a good candidate to debut with a full-season Class-A affiliate rather than stay back in extended for the Complex League.
37. Antoine Kelly, LHP, Double-A Frisco (23)
Trade with Brewers/2022 (N/A)
Kelly was considered the headline piece for Texas in the trade-deadline deal that sent Matt Bush to the Brewers on August 1 last year, though his performance was uneven the rest of the summer while 28-year-old infielder Mark Mathias, the second player in the deal, made a case for an increased role with the Rangers moving forward. Kelly, a big left-hander who had been ranked by Baseball America as Milwaukee’s No. 7, No. 5 and No. 13 prospect the previous three offseasons, held High-A opponents to a .189 batting average (with 119 strikeouts in 91 innings) leading up to the trade and Double-A hitters to a .194 clip after the deal. But his command nosedived, as he walked an unconscionable 19 hitters in 18 2/3 Frisco innings after walking five per nine innings before the trade. It led the Rangers to move Kelly to the bullpen at season’s end. It’s a transition some considered inevitable, as his repertoire is led by a fastball from a low arm slot that touches 98 and a power slider, with a changeup that has been more inconsistent. The late-season fade emboldened Texas to leave Kelly exposed to the Rule 5 Draft without consequence. The question now is whether the organization will give the southpaw another chance to start or commit fully to the bullpen experiment. Though he was left off the 40-man roster, Kelly will start his spring training on the major-league side with a non-roster invite.
(Top photo of Antoine Kelly courtesy of Frisco RoughRiders)
