FRISCO — The timing lined up almost perfectly Tuesday evening. About the time Oakland’s Matt Chapman was golfing a first-inning Taylor Hearn fastball over the center field wall down in Arlington, Hans Crouse was inducing a double play grounder from San Antonio’s C.J. Abrams, one of the top 10 prospects in baseball.
A few moments later — though it probably seemed like hours, even in the cool comfort of Globe Life Field — Sean Murphy was walking to load the bases against Hearn. In the heat at Frisco, rejuvenated Rangers prospect Bubba Thompson was singling to lead off the bottom of the first and stealing second. And a blink of an eye later, as manager Chris Woodward came out to pull his starter before the first inning was over, at Frisco Josh Stowers was hitting his eighth homer in 80 at-bats for the RoughRiders.
That’s how stark the difference is now between the big league club, which fell down by nine runs early Tuesday and founders to win a game a week, and the Double-A club, where hope really does reside. And that was before the closest thing the Rangers have to faint-inducing prospect, Josh Jung, ever took an at-bat. By the time he came to the plate, the Riders, who would win 7-2, already had a 2-0 lead.
Perhaps that’s why President of Baseball Operations Jon Daniels was sitting in the crowd at Riders Field on Tuesday, monitoring the big league club from his phone.
“There is a lot of depth,” Daniels said. “It’s a talented group.”
Daniels will spend a lot of the remainder of the week watching the Riders before joining the team’s draft meetings that start this weekend. He will get a chance to see a first-place team for a week. He will see everybody from a pitching staff that began the Tuesday with the fourth-best ERA (3.47) in Double-A, where prospects traditionally separate themselves from the pack. And that was before Hans Crouse pitched 62/3 shutout innings, using a newly developed cutter and just-discovered sinker. Crouse was charged with a run after he left. But it doesn’t matter; he pitched artfully against the Padres farm club.
“I really wanted to pitch deep in this game,” Crouse said. “To get two outs on five pitches in the first inning was really big for me. I’ve felt like I’ve had some tough luck lately and told my family I was just one thing away from things clicking and going deeper. That was the cutter tonight. It clicked.”
Daniels will be able to see Jung, who hit a pair of homers and batted .421 over his first week of games at Double-A. He will be able to see more of resurgent Sherten Apostel, who has been mashing baseballs as a full-time first baseman for the last month. He will see more of Thompson, the 2017 first-rounder overmatched at Down East two years ago, but more than holding his own at a higher level.
“I think we do have a talented group here,” manager Jared Goedert said Tuesday afternoon. “But even though we’ve been able to win some games, I don’t think we’ve hit our stride. We haven’t clicked on all cylinders. We’ve obviously pitched really well. But I don’t think we’ve hit where we want to be.”
He’s got a point. After all, it’s hard to hit on all cylinders when cylinders have largely been missing. Jung, the Rangers’ best prospect, missed the first five weeks of the season with a stress fracture in his foot. Sam Huff still hasn’t played. Davis Wendzel, Jung’s co-first round pick in 2019, has been out a month after fracturing the hamate bone in his wrist. He’s going to miss at least two more weeks. Keep this group together and it might just plunder the Double-A Central or, as we prefer it, The Whataburger League.
Then again: The biggest challenge might be to keep it together.
As dismal as the start to the big league season has been, the Rangers have started dipping into the farm system. Eli White, who homered Tuesday against Oakland, is now playing a prominent role. Andy Ibáñez, who was called up and homered Monday, is going to get more time, too. Curtis Terry might be on the way from Round Rock before the All-Star break.
Others might be, too.
“With their performance, the way they are going about it, they are forcing us to have some discussions and ultimately, potentially make some decisions,” Daniels said at the outset of the week. “We’re not quite there yet with [Terry] but I do believe he is going to get an opportunity to show what he can do at the big league level.”
If Terry goes up, Apostel likely goes to Triple-A. Whenever the Rangers decide they’ve had enough of the veteran fill-ins at third base, Jung will get his turn. For now, he’s just happy “surrendering the result” and “being water” at the plate. It sounds metaphysical, but maybe the big league hitters could use some metaphysics.
Maybe they could use a talk with Jung, who talks hitting at a level unlike any other Rangers prospect we’ve come across.
“Finally, being able to play ball again and getting to be around my teammates and seeing their success, it just all felt real again,” Jung said before going hitless for the first time at Double-A, though he did reach base on a walk. “Mentally, everything that I’ve been working on throughout my entire rehab progression, I was actually able to put into practice, and the mental headspace that I was in, just felt amazing.”
Imagine how it will feel when the Riders are hitting on all cylinders. That is if the Rangers don’t start requisitioning them sooner. Speaking of which: Just about the time Oakland’s Skye Bolt double to make it 13-6 against a beleaguered bullpen in Arlington, Nick Snyder was firing 96-99 mph fastballs to strike out the San Antonio side to finish off the Riders’ win.
The timing couldn’t have said it any better.
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