History – Scott Lucas

8/12: Rangers Farm Report

The farm had yesterday off, but as a treat, I’ve written a bonus history lesson to fill a gap in my coverage.

Transactions
OF Evan Carter is on rehab with Frisco. RHP Emiliano Teodo is active in Frisco. He’s been on the IL since the beginning of June. 2025 seventh-round OF Paxton Kling was activated at low-A Hickory.

Rangers Minor League History 2007-2024
When I decided to replace the “Five Years Ago” entries with “Rangers Minor League History” for this season, I quickly settled on various categories covering team and individual performances. Last week, I realized I was inadvertently omitting one of the most amazing teams from the Rangers or any other club: the swingin’ Hickory Crawdads of 2013.

At the time, Texas’s low-A roster was often the most anticipated during Spring Training, as the Rangers were (in)famous for aggressive assignments. Hickory’s offense would have six teenagers plus another (Jorge Alfaro) who was 20 at the mid-season point but 19 when the season started. Hickory’s offense averaged 20.3 years of age, 1.4 below the league average.

The season began innocently enough, but the Crawdads soon began hitting homers at an absurd rate: 42 in a 20-game span. In mid-May, Hickory had 53 in 31 games. Lakewood had eight.

At some point I wondered how Hickory was tracking historically and created a chart (below) measuring their progress against the most prolific low-A team I could find, the 1998 Macon Braves, who hit 173. When the first half concluded, Hickory already had 106 homers. The Crawdads would slow in the second half and threatened to fall below the pace, but 28 homers in the final 18 games would clinch the record with a total of 178.

As a team, Hickory was equivalent to Babe Ruth in the early 1920s. The average Sally League opponent hit 70 homers. Again, Hickory had 178. Adjusted for a hitter-friendly park, Hickory hit 93% more homers than the league average. No other team in my database is even close. Here’s the top five in homers (relative to park and league) in all full-season leagues during 2007-2024 in which the Rangers played.

Admittedly, Hickory’s park was especially generous in 2018 (factor 1.18), but their power was genuine. The Crawdads hit more homers on the road than the totals of nine opponents:

108, Greensboro
105, Asheville
100, HICKORY HOME
97, Charleston
82, West Virginia
78, HICKORY ROAD
67, Augusta
62, Kannapolis
60, Greenville
60, Rome
59, Lexington
57, Delmarva
56, Hagerstown
50, Savannah
49, Lakewood

Joey Gallo became the first teenager to hit 40 minor league homers since Dick Simpson of the Class C San Jose Bees in 1962. Gallo’s 38 homers in Hickory were two shy of Russ Branyan’s Sally-best 40 in 1996. (He also hit two in Arizona on rehab.)

Here’s a list ranked by homers of the best performer for each team in the league plus every Crawdad who hit equal to or more than the “worst” team leader:

1. Joey Gallo, 38
2. Ryan Rua, 29
3. Viosergy Rosa (MIA), 23
4. Lewis Brinson, 21
5. Greg Bird (NYY), 20
6. Francisco Sosa (COL), 20
9. Brandon Miller (WAS), 18
10. Stetson Allie (PIT), 17
11. Nick Williams, 17
12. Jorge Alfaro, 16
17. Nomar Mazara, 13
17. David Chester (BOS), 13
17. Mitch Delfino (SFO), 13
17. Fred Ford (KAN), 13
24. Jason Coats (CHW), 12
26. Art Charles (PHI) 11
26. Josh Elander (ATL), 11
31. Eudy Pina (NYM), 10
35. David Lyon, 9
35. Tucker Nathans (BAL), 9

The 2013 Crawdads are also famous for having an entire defensive alignment reach the Majors:
C Jorge Alfaro
1B Ronald Guzman
2B Ryan Rua
3B Joey Gallo
SS Luis Marte
LF Nick Williams
CF Lewis Brinson
RF Nomar Mazara

Here’s an example box score, plus Nick Vickerson as DH.

I know this team well, of course, as do you, I imagine. So how did it evade my original list of teams to cover? Nearly all of my team entries cover overall performance, not specific categories like homers, and the 2013 Crawdads had astonishing power but were honestly pretty bad in other respects. They scored at just a league-average rate. They had a 103 OPS+ but were 19 points below average in batting and 21 in OBP. In addition to the homers, they set an all-time Sally record with 1403 strikeouts (as noted in the preceding chart), more than ten per game, which at the time was scandalous. The rest of the league averaged 7.8 per game. That total has since been surpassed multiple times, but relative to the league, Hickory’s K rate remains the worst of any full-season team in a Texas-affiliated league during the past 18 seasons. Joey Gallo had 165 but was not the team leader. Lewis Brinson had 191. Four others exceeded 100, Luis Marte had 99, and Ryan Rua had 91.

Hickory actually had better pitching than hitting and finished 76-63 but failed to make the playoffs. Sadly, the team fell flat in a win-or-bust game to conclude the first half and was eliminated with several games to play in the second.

Rangers Farm Report

Are the 2025 Rangers the worst example of letting great pitching go unrewarded in franchise history? A couple of years ago, I created a spreadsheet to measure the entire history of the Rangers in overlapping 54-game spans (one-third of a season) to test whether the spring of 2023 featured the best Texas offensive performance ever. (It did!) Updating and expanding that spreadsheet allowed me to answer this question, for better or worse. I sought combinations of above-average run prevention combined with below-average offense. I ignored spans that wrapped two seasons.

The current period ranks only fifth-worst mathematically, but that doesn’t provide a complete answer. What matters is the performance measured against expectations. Let’s review the top five:

1. 8/5/83 – 9/29/83 (games 107-160)
Runs scored per game: 3.2 (27% worse than average)
Runs allowed per game: 3.2 (27% better than average)
Record: 26-28

Frustration level: Medium

This period was simply the cap to an initially exciting but ultimately aggravating year. Following a dismal ’82, the Rangers stormed to the division lead under new manager Doug Rader, peaking at 44-33. Then, Texas’ familiar July swoon commenced, leaving them 51-55 and six games out of first when this period began. Over the next 54 games, Texas would allow 171 runs, fewest in the league and four fewer than the White Sox, but the Sox would score 82 more runs and win 14 additional games. For the season, Texas had the league’s best pitching and defense and would outscore the opposition by 30 runs but finish 77-85.

2. 8/5/76 – 9/26/76 (games 104-157)
Runs scored per game: 3.1 (23% worse than average)
Runs allowed per game: 3.5 (13% better than average)
Record: 23-31

Frustration level: Low

A lesser version of 1983. Texas bolted to a 19-9 start but lost the division lead for good by mid-May and were ten games behind Kansas City by mid-July. These games weren’t of consequence.

3. 4/29/84 – 6/27/84 (games 22-75)
Runs scored per game: 3.7 (18% worse than average)
Runs allowed per game: 3.8 (16% better than average)
Record: 25-29

Frustration level: Medium-low

The ’83 season did offer hope for the future despite the drab finish, but Texas’s efforts to improve the moribund offense were essentially limited to trading for OF Gary Ward (a net positive) and C Ned Yost (a net negative statistically and catastrophic for public relations, as Texas dispensed of revered catcher Jim Sundberg). The Rangers continued to pitch well but would falter in the second half, and Kansas City won the division with only 84 wins while the Rangers dropped to the basement. The Rangers didn’t expect to challenge for the division but did expect to be competitive, and they squandered a period when they could have banked some extra wins.

4. 6/3/09 – 8/4/09 (games 53-106)
Runs scored per game: 4.2 (16% worse than average)
Runs allowed per game: 4.0 (19% better than average)
Record: 28-26

Frustration level: Medium-high

When this sequence began, the Rangers were 31-21 and leading the division by 4.5 games. During the span in question, they treaded water while the Angels went 37-17. Texas had a slew of up-and-coming pitchers beginning to make their marks, but youngsters Jarrod Saltamacchia and Chris Davis disappointed, Josh Hamilton backslid from his breakout 2008, and Hank Blalock’s career ground to a halt at the age of 28. On the whole, 2009 is to be remembered fondly after what transpired during most of the previous nine years, but Texas might have let a little on the table.

5. 3/28/25 – 5/26/25 (games 2-55)
Runs scored per game: 3.4 (17% worse than average)
Runs allowed per game: 3.5 (13% better than average)
Record: 26-28

Frustration level: Ugh

A league-average offense would have an additional 40 runs, and the team’s record based on run differential would be a division-leading 31-24.

The roster as initially constructed was intended to win now. The 2009 Rangers were young. The 2025 version is the oldest in the league. A fair number of players are on the downside or likely as good as they’ll ever be this moment, and who’ll arrive to compensate for their declining production is in doubt. The bullpen is going to require another wholesale reconstruction this winter.

Also, none of the previous spans began a season. The 2025 Rangers are absolutely the strongest example of great pitching / bad hitting in that respect. Next is the 1977 edition, which began the season 27-27 with run prevention 13% better than average and scoring 12% worse. I knew the 1983 and 2009 clubs would make this list before I did the work, but even then, mid and late-season spans just don’t resonate as much starting this way.

Enough games remain that the proper course might still be staying put and counting on internal improvement, but enough have passed that the optics of that course are nearly untenable. I don’t envy the front office right now. Some ugly decisions are coming if fortune doesn’t change quickly.

Rangers Minor League History, 2007-2024
The best full-season team during 2007-2024 in a Rangers-affiliated league was the 2021 low-A Charleston RiverDogs.

Record: 82-38
Run-differential Record: 82-38
Component Record: 86-34

In undertaking this task, I considered ignoring the 2021 season because of the last of a 2020 season and shortened schedules. Ultimately, I decided to keep it while scaling results based on the number of games played, and Charleston was still on top. Another quirk of 2021 was extremely localized scheduling. For example, 72 of AAA Round Rock’s originally scheduled 142 games were against just two teams, Sugar Land and OKC. I’d previously about league-mates Fredericksburg (44-76) and Kannapolis (40-79) as two of the worst five full-season teams in the era, yet the RiverDogs only played six games against Kannapolis and none against the FNats, so they didn’t achieve their status by pounding the worst teams.

Charleston started 9-9 and finished 2-6 (including four losses in six games to Down East). In between, they played .755 ball (71-23). The offense scored 6.4 runs per game (25% above the league average, 127 OPS+) and allowed 4.1 (19% better than average, 78 opposing OPS+).

Charleston was no outlier in the Tampa Bay system:
AAA Durham: 86-44
AA Montgomery: 62-55
Hi-A Bowling Green: 82-36
Lo-A Charleston: 82-38
Complex Squad: 42-15
Total: 354-188

Per Baseball America, the 2021 Rays had the best composite winning percentage in the US-based minors in at least 30 years. Charleston won the league championship series (in a full five games over Down East), Bowling won as well, Durham had the best team in AAA (which didn’t have a playoff that year), and Montgomery lost its championship series in five games.

In a familiar refrain, a dominant minor team hasn’t translated into much MLB success (so far). The Dogs had IF Oslevis Basabe, OF Heriberto Hernandez and OF Alexander Ovalles for signifcant portions of the season, all part of the Nathaniel Lowe trade, but only Basabe has reached the Majors, and at the tender age of 24 he would appear to be AAA depth. Utility man Brett Wisely leads the bunch with 144 MLB games. Taj Bradley, who also pitched for Bowling Green that year, is an established Tampa Bay rotation member.

Elsewhere
Marc Church (oblique) threw 1.2 scoreless innings with three strikeouts in a rehab assignment for the complex squad yesterday.

Per a local report, Texas has signed 30-year-old OF Billy McKinney to a minor deal. The Mets released him last week. Texas will be his eighth organization in the past six years. McKinney was a Rangers for a few days after the 2021 season, purchased from the Dodgers but then non-tendered.

Texas’s Most and Least Stable Year-Over Year Rotations

Acknowledging an inability to develop starting pitching and wishing to jump-start their return to competitive ball, the Rangers have purchased an entire rotation on the open market. An ostensible rotation, given the injury histories of its members, but let’s leave that aside for now. Added to last year’s signing of Jon Gray were Martin Perez (himself a free agent for only a few days as he pondered Texas’s qualifying offer), Jake DeGrom, Andrew Heaney, and Nathan Eovaldi.

With that in mind, I wondered about the most and least stable year-over-year rotations in team history. I looked the data two ways: percentage of starts in a season made by pitchers who started at least once for the Rangers the year before, and percentage of starts made by pitchers who started at least ten games the year before (or a proportional number in shortened seasons).

The 2023 rotation gives the appearance of huge turnover, but I seriously doubt it will rank very high in franchise history. That would require Jon Gray and Martin Perez to be nearly absent, and even then, much of the high-level depth consists of last year’s rotation (Dane Dunning, Cole Ragans, Glenn Otto).

First, the rotations with the most year-over-year turnover (Red/bold = 10+ starts in the initial year, red = 1-9 starts in the initial year):

1. 2006 (18% of starts by previous year’s starters, 0% of starts by those with 10 or more starts)

2005	2006
31 – Chris Young 30 – Kenny Rogers 20 – Chan Ho Park 12 – Ryan Drese 12 – Pedro Astacio 10 – Juan Dominguez 10 – Ricardo Rodriguez 9 – Joaquin Benoit 8 – Kameron Loe 6 – John Wasdin 6 – CJ Wilson 4 – RA Dickey 3 – Edinson Volquez 1 – Josh Rupe	34 – Kevin Millwood 33 – Vicente Padilla 23 – John Koronka 15 – Kameron Loe 14 – Rob Tejeda 13 – John Rheinecker 13 – Adam Eaton 8 – Edinson Volquez 5 – John Wasdin 2 – Kip Wells 1 – Rick Bauer 1 – RA Dickey

2. 2018 (26% of starts by previous year’s starters, 22% of starts by those with 10 or more starts)

2017	2018
32 – Martín Pérez 28 – Andrew Cashner 24 – Cole Hamels 22 – Yu Darvish 18 – Nick Martinez 15 – A.J. Griffin 10 – Tyson Ross 6 – Austin Bibens-Dirkx 5 – Miguel González 1 – Alex Claudio 1 – Dillon Gee	28 – Mike Minor 24 – Bartolo Colon 20 – Cole Hamels 18 – Yovani Gallardo 15 – Martín Pérez 12 – Doug Fister 12 – Matt Moore 8 – Ariel Jurado 6 – Austin Bibens-Dirkx 5 – Yohander Méndez 5 – Drew Hutchison 4 – Adrian Sampson 2 – Jeffrey Springs 2 – Connor Sadzeck 1 – Alex Claudio

3. 2019 (40% of starts by previous year’s starters, 20% of starts by those with 10 or more starts)

2018	2019
28 – Mike Minor 24 – Bartolo Colon 20 – Cole Hamels 18 – Yovani Gallardo 15 – Martín Pérez 12 – Doug Fister 12 – Matt Moore 8 – Ariel Jurado 6 – Austin Bibens-Dirkx 5 – Yohander Méndez 5 – Drew Hutchison 4 – Adrian Sampson 2 – Jeffrey Springs 2 – Connor Sadzeck 1 – Alex Claudio	33 – Lance Lynn 32 – Mike Minor 18 – Ariel Jurado 15 – Adrian Sampson 9 – Jesse Chavez 9 – Drew Smyly 9 – Kolby Allard 8 – Shelby Miller 6 – Brock Burke 4 – Pedro Payano 4 – Joe Palumbo 4 – Edinson Volquez

Next, the three most stable Texas rotations year-over-year:

1. 1990 (88% of starts by previous year’s starters, an identical 88% of starts by those with 10 or more starts)

1989	1990
32 – Nolan Ryan 31 – Bobby Witt 30 – Charlie Hough 28 – Kevin Brown 22 – Mike Jeffcoat 15 – Jamie Moyer 2 – John Barfield 1 – Brad Arnsberg 1 – Wilson Alvarez	32 – Charlie Hough 32 – Bobby Witt 30 – Nolan Ryan 26 – Kevin Brown 12 – Mike Jeffcoat 10 – Jamie Moyer 6 – Scott Chiamparino 6 – Brian Bohanon 3 – Kenny Rogers 3 – Craig McMurtry 2 – Gerald Alexander

2. 1979 (85% of starts by previous year’s starters, 81% by those with 10 or more starts)

1978	1979
33- Jon Matlack 30 – Fergie Jenkins 28 – Doyle Alexander 22 – Doc Medich 22 – Doc Ellis 11 – Steve Comer 9 – Jim Umbarger 4 – Paul Mirabella 2 – Roger Moret 1 – Danny Darwin	37 – Fergie Jenkins 36 – Steve Comer 19 – Doc Medich 18 – Doyle Alexander 13 – Jon Matlack 12 – John Henry Johnson 9 – Dock Ellis 6 – Danny Darwin 4 – Brian Allard 3 – Dave Rajsich 2 – Ed Farmer 2 – Jerry Don Gleaton 1 – Larry McCall

3. 1992 (81% of starts by previous year’s starters, 78% by those with 10 or more starts)

1991	1992
33 – Kevin Brown 27 – Nolan Ryan 25 – Jose Guzman 16 – Bobby Witt 12 – Oil Can Boyd 11 – Brian Bohanon 9 – Kenny Rogers 9 – Gerald Alexander 9 – Jon Barfield 5 – Scott Chiamparino 3 – Hector Fajardo 2 – Terry Matthews 1 – Mark Petkovsek	35 – Kevin Brown 33 – Jose Guzman 27 – Nolan Ryan 25 – Bobby Witt 12 – Roger Pavlik 10 – Todd Burns 7 – Brian Bohanon 4 – Jeff Robinson 4 – Scott Chiamparino 3 – Mike Jeffcoat 2 – Dan Smith

Palace Music, “Stablemate,” from Arise Therefore, 1996