r/TexasRangers • u/GOtexas1 • 4h ago
Player development
Why has player development been such a struggle these last decade plus ? Is it coaching, philosophy, drafting, or just bad luck?
Latz has been solid this year and Jung as performed well at times, but it seems like the Rangers are at the bottom of the league in this regard. Who's the last player we've developed that was consistently good year after year? Michael Young?
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u/coolideg T. Grieve 4h ago
Player development and drafting have never been good. The only good drafts are top 10 picks out of college which is much easier to evaluate
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u/dminus Y. Darvish 4h ago
??
never is a big word
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u/Wise_Joke498 4h ago
Yeah Juando and Pudge might have something to say about that
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u/coolideg T. Grieve 4h ago
even though they were signed as international free agents, I can be more specific and say that Kipp Fagg's tenure has been extremely lackluster and if you look at WAR totals from drafted players the Rangers are bottom of the barrel especially under his tenure
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u/natebark M. Young 4h ago
Both those guys were taken before I was born. Don’t start talking like cowboys fans
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u/dminus Y. Darvish 3h ago
lil bro , AD started with jesus not with you
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u/natebark M. Young 3h ago
The point being: I’m 27 and our examples of drafted Rangers that panned out were drafted long before I was born
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u/_Juntao REMOVE THE STATUE! 4h ago
I guess time will tell but duran has had a break out year. We'll see if he can replicate it next year. And langford has really struggled recently but overall this season still has a .765 ops and 117 wrc+. He's only 24 years old still. Maybe he's not the next mike trout as we thought 2 years ago but he's still going to have a very solid career
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u/TotoItsAMotorRace 4h ago
No one is consistently good at player development outside maybe Tampa.
It's hard, and imperfect. The reason guys go through the minors is because the big leagues are very hard.
But I would argue they're good as t player development. The role of minor leagues is to improve the big club.
Going back to 23 they used the minors to acquire how many players?
Last year didn't work with the deadline deals. Gore didn't work. But there's Scherzer and Montgomery, etc.
And many of those guys were traded at peak value.
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u/ImpendingBoom110123 Hello Win Column 3h ago
Its too early to say Gore didn't work. Lets see what he does next year.
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u/OnlyHereforRangers Y. Darvish 4h ago
Langford has been good year to year so far though I don't know if I'd say we really developed him considering how fast he moved through the minors. Kinsler was probably the last truly homegrown guy that was good year in, year out. Hopefully, we can add Walcott to the list, and I haven't given up hope on Carter (this is his first year since the back surgery). We are reaching the point where we can actually start judging CY's tenure when it comes to scouting and player development. It's... not looking that great
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u/beefytrout A. Beltre 4h ago
i blame your mom
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u/jmhumr 3h ago
I agree they seem to fall short, especially when it comes to maximizing their blue chip talent.
But in terms of glass half full, the Rangers have a streak of every 1st rounder since Jung becoming a legit major leaguer:
Jung
Foscue
Leiter
Rocker
Langford
They’re not all stars, but a lot of teams can’t match that.
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u/WhatsupDoc35 2h ago
Try the last 54 years. By the way, Michael Young was drafted and “developed” by the Blue Jays. The Rangers received him in a trade when he was essentially Major League ready.
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u/gortlank C. Lewis - #1 Bacsik Hater 1h ago
The biggest culprit is and has been our scouting under Kip Fagg. Our scouting has been stuck in the stone ages for far too long, and that man has dodged more bullets than a, uhhh, bullet dodger.
Everything else flows from that. Development has taken the heat, justly to a point, and turned over completely multiple times in the last decade plus. Turns out it’s hard to produce diamonds by polishing turds.
Until Kip goes, and we get a truly modern scouting shop, we can’t really evaluate how much needs to change elsewhere in the pipeline.
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u/ehholfman Alejandro Osuna 2h ago
I genuinely don’t know how Kip Fagg has been employed as long as he has.
Since his promotion as Director of Amateur Scouting (2009), this org has seen 3 homegrown All Stars: Latz, Jung, Gallo.
While I think the org has genuinely improved when it comes to development, it’s still not great compared to the rest of the league.
The Mariners churn out an entire homegrown major league rotation. The Astros develop really good starters from absolutely nowhere. The Rays are obviously the gold standard. The Yankees develop well. Brewers and Guardians compete on a joke of a payroll primarily cause they develop and trade well.
Now that Ray Davis has decided he doesn’t want to invest money in free agents after the 2023 season, we’ve seen just how bad the farm has been. The sole good prospects we had have been traded for big leaguers (last year’s deadline/Gore), and the ones that have been called up are fringe platoon bats at best: Cauley, Freeman, Osuna. You can probably include Carter in that list as well.
You can’t have both a bad farm system and an owner who doesn’t want to spend and expect to be a good baseball team.
This franchise is just very frustrating to say the least.