Movement
IF Sebastian Walcott is active in Frisco and will DH tonight. That was quick.
Up to Round Rock: C Julian Brock
Up to Frisco: OF Yeison Morrobel
Up to Hub City: 1B/OF Marcos Torres, IF/OF Casey Cook (off 60-day IL)
Up to Hickory: RHP Mason McConnaughey, OF Jay McQueen
Signed And Assigned
Round 5. TWP Michael Anderson ($172,500, slot $486,800)
Round 6. RHP Aidan Brainard $2,500, slot $373,800)
Round 7. RHP Caden Aoki ($2,500, slot $294,800)
Round 9. OF Kaden Carpenter ($2,500, 209,000)
Round 10. IF Evan Morrison ($2,500, slot 196,200)
All were assigned to Arizona. These are all but one of a group of college seniors I mentioned would be signed for far less than slot, with the savings used to lure Brody Bumila and perhaps others. They collectively signed for $1.378 million under slot. The Rangers have employed this tactic before, but never so aggressively. In 2021, Texas signed picks 6-10 for a combined $285,000. Two of those picks — Chase Lee and Liam Hicks — would make the Majors, so don’t automatically dismiss the 2026 group.
20th-round RHP Cody Airington announced he would be returning to Austin Peay.
A Quick Look At Team Data
At the three levels below AAA, offense is higher than it has ever been in my 20 years on the beast, higher than any other season under the modern classification system (1990), higher than any season since at least 1970, as far back as I checked. Wild times.
I’ll also have a quick rundown of best pitchers and hitters in the next couple of days.
Texas
Shout it to the back row: The Rangers have an average offense!
The problem is they’re not scoring as many runs as they should given their OPS. That must mean bad hitting with runners in scoring position, right?* Yes and no. The Rangers are actually dead-average in that respect. The problem is they’re above average with just one runner in scoring position, yet not seeing any advantage in terms of actual runs. And, they’re dismal with runners at 2nd and 3rd, hitting .226/.280/.293 and scoring 18 runs fewer than average, on pace to cost themselves three wins (in the abstract) this season for performance in a situation that occurs only once or twice per game.
Round Rock
For a decent stretch, the Express pitching hovered near the league average, but yielding 8.8 runs per game at Reno and 11.5 at Vegas in the last month has dropped the staff well into the league’s bottom half in run prevention. Round Rock has allowed more homers than any other team, almost unfathomable given the presence of Albuquerque, El Paso, Reno and Salt Lake. As it stands, they’re the fourth-worst** team I’ve covered, ahead of just the Frisco RoughRiders of 2018, 2015 and 2016. They’ve had massive turnover.
Frisco
Frisco has the league’s best offense and so far is the best full-season offense I’ve covered in 20 years. I’d certainly hoped for a strong performance given the advanced ages of most of the participants. Recently, they’ve added several younger prospects from Hub City without losing a beat. The pitching’s lone deficiency is proneness to homers.
Hub City
Hub City to date has the worst pitching of any full-season team I’ve covered and among the worst of any of the over 900 teams participating in a Texas-affiliated league over the past 20 years. They give up a ton of homers and a ton of walks. Sorry. Hector Osorio has been a fine addition, but losing Moore, Perich and Disla has hurt.
Hickory
The Crawdads are on pace to be the fifth-best team I’ve covered. The pitching is good, but “only” good. Much of Hickory’s run prevention belongs to a stellar defense.
* The universal condition is that every fan is dissatisfied with their team’s hitting with runners in scoring position. Fire the hitting coach.
** In this context, I mean the season for any full-season Rangers-affiliated squad during 2007-2026, of which there have been 80.