Rangers Farm Report: Games of Thursday 25 July

Sorry for the delay. I’ve been dealing with computer virus trouble and lost a mostly completed report, and I had to care for other tasks before renewing this one.

Box Scores

AAA: Round Rock 4, @ Albuquerque (COL) 6
Round Rock: 7 hits, 3 walks, 12 strikeouts
Opponent: 8 hits, 2 walks, 4 strikeouts
Record: 12-11, 3 GB, 49-48 overall

SP Owen White: 6 IP, 7 H (3 HR), 5 R, 1 BB, 3 SO, 83 P / 52 S, 5.67 ERA
SS Ezequiel Duran: 1-4, HR (3), .211/.243/.408
CF Dustin Harris: 2-4, SB (25), .280/.365/.387
1B Davis Wendzel: 1-4, HR (6), .293/.387/.517

Owen White deserved better. One of his three homers is catching up to the Voyager probe, but the other two were at speed/angle combinations that had left the yard only 14%-17% of the time in the PCL so far this season. The homers by Duran and Wendzel were not park-aided.

AA: Frisco 9, Tulsa (LAD) 3
Frisco: 8 hits, 8 walks, 7 strikeouts
Opponent: 6 hits, 1 walk, 11 strikeouts
Record: 15-9, tied for first, 59-34 overall

SP Tyler Mahle: 4 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 1 BB, 3 SO, 55 P / 34 S, 4.50 ERA
RP Bryan Chi: 4 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 7 SO, 4.10 ERA
3B Cody Freeman: 2-2, 2B, HR (12), 2 BB, SB (10), .277/.336/.471
SS Keyber Rodriguez: 2-3, 2B, SB (5), .252/.303/.386

Tyler Mahle retired his final ten batters, but a single, walk, and two doubles in the 1st sullied his line. Bryan Chi produced a nearly identical line to last night in 2023 but in low-A, so Thursday represents a career outing. The 25-year-old Cuban had bounced all over the system in the season’s first month before settling in at Frisco, arguably a tougher-than-preferable location, but he’s slowly acclimating.

Cody Freeman’s 146 bases on hits are the best of his career, and we’re still in July. At 23, he’s still fairly young for the level.

Kumar Rocker will start tonight as an ordinary roster member, no longer on rehab.

Hi-A: Hickory 4, Greenville (BOS) 5
Hickory: 7 hits, 3 walks, 8 strikeouts
Opponent: 10 hits, 4 walks, 9 strikeouts
Record: 14-12, 2.5 GB, 42-50 overall

SP Alejandro Rosario: 5 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 1 HBP, 5 SO, 79 P / 55 S, 3.86 ERA
SS Sebastian Walcott: 3-5, HR (9), SB (13), .195/.247/.414
3B Gleider Figuereo: 1-4, HR (6),

Hi-A: Hickory 6, Greenville (BOS) 7 (11)
Hickory: 7 hits, 10 walks, 8 strikeouts
Opponent: 11 hits, 3 walks, 14 strikeouts
Record: 14-13, 2.5 GB, 42-51 overall

SP Mitch Bratt: 5.2 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 7 SO, 77 P / 55 S, 3.03 ERA
RP DJ Peters: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 3 SO, 6.48 ERA
2B Jayce Easley: 1-2, 3 BB, 2 SB (16), .176/.316/.200
SS Sebastian Walcott: 0-2, 3 BB, .247/.344/.426
1B Luis Mieses: 3-5, 2B, SB (3), .275/.306/.483
LF Quincy Scott: 1-3, 2 BB, .209/.314/.275

A pity. Hickory went 4-for-27 with runners in scoring position in the two games. In the conclusion of the rain-suspended Wednesday game. the Crawdads had the tying run in scoring position in the 8th and 9th to no avail. In the regularly scheduled contest,Ā  Hickory had the winning run on third in the 10th and tying run in the 11th but couldn’t get either across.

For the first time with Hickory, Alejandro Rosario avoided walking anyone, a commonplace occurrence in Down East. The updated Fangraphs top-100 prospect list contains Sebastian Walcott at #26, and, in a mild surprise, Rosario at #82. Rosario has certainly been story of the season in terms of prospects on the rise, but I wasn’t expecting such a lofty ranking so soon, although I was duly impressedĀ  during my in-person visit in June.

June 6th was the last time Mitch Bratt allowed more than two runs or one walk.

Lo-A: wet

Two today.

Rookie: Rangers 2, Guardians 3
Record: 36-24, division champion

The Rangers concluded the regular season with a loss but ran away with the division, besting the M’s by eight games. They’ll play the Diamondbacks (39-21) tomorrow in a one-and-done, and if victorious they’ll face either the Dodgers (40-20) or Giants (33-27) in the championship. 

Brock Porter’s final complex-league appearance found a middle ground: 3 IP, 2 H, 3 R, 2 BB, 2 HBP, 0 SO. He allowed his first homer, but the combined four BB/HBP were actually a mild improvement on what came before. He exits with a 7.36 ERA and bizarre .150/.393/.225 opposing line. 16 of 56 batters (29%) reached via walk or HBP., and 10 (19%) struck out. The question now is whether Porter remains in Arizona or is given the chance to continue pitching in real games. I don’t have a good feel for that. Obviously, the control is dire, and he’d probably necessitate a another reliever warming before he even took the mound, but he has always been extraordinarily hard to hit, so heading to Down East isn’t automatically a much more difficult situation.

Today’s Starters
AAA: TBA
AA: Rocker
Hi-A: McCarty
Lo-A: TBA x 2

Five Years Ago Yesterday
I expanded on the organizational rankings provided by Fangraphs (12th) and Baseball America (28th). “The short, oversimplified version: FanGraphs acknowledges the lack of stars but credits the impressive depth. Baseball America acknowledges the lack of stars, glances askew at the depth, and decries all the injuries, which to be sure are numerous and gobsmacking.” I found a middle ground, predictably. Maybe too predictably. Fangraphs was an outlier on Solak, more confident than anyone I can recall that he’d become an everyday player, and that impression had an outsize effect on the rankings. Using the value system assigned to scouting grades, I found that decreasing him from a 50 to a 45 dropped the entire system from 12th to 17th. Regarding Baseball America, I felt the system had improved from a nadir of circa 2017, so if the Rangers were 28th in 2019, what were they then?