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5 most encouraging developments for the Texas Rangers from an otherwise lost season

The young talent’s finish to the season and the team’s pitching prospects are just a few of the bright spots headed into 2025.

We spent the last, oh, five months of the season detailing what went wrong for the Rangers. When you go from World Champions to a losing record, the list can be exhaustive.

Instead of picking up confetti, the Rangers are spending this offseason picking up the pieces.

But, for as much self-evaluation as they must do as they prepare for 2025, they must also take into account what events and developments may have long-range positive impact.

With that said, here’s our list of the top five Encouraging Developments of the 2024 Season:

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Wyatt Langford’s finish: If we’re going to truly assess a rookie’s value, there needs to be extra weight placed on performance as the season wears on. First, there is the physical and mental grind associated with the longest season of their baseball lives. Second, the rest of the league is getting better real-time scouting reports on the rookie’s strengths and weaknesses.

On this scale, Langford should finish higher than he probably will in the Rookie of the Year balloting. From June 1, when he returned from a hamstring issue, until the season’s end, he generated 3.1 WAR, according to Fangraphs, which put him 19th among the 67 players who carried heavy workloads (minimum of 400 plate appearances in that time). He posted a .796 OPS, which was well above league average. And he took home September Rookie and Player of the Month honors. He answered any questions that arose early in the season.

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They can go into 2025 knowing they have a core offensive player who can play either a corner outfield spot or center field.

Jacob deGrom’s health: Perhaps the three most important games the Rangers played this year all came in September and with the club out of the race. But deGrom returned to the mound after 16 months of rehab and recovery from elbow surgery and looked both fully healthy and happy. There was a difference in body language in his three starts in 2024 vs. his six in 2023. The difference was a player who knew he was healthy vs. one who seemed certain something was about to break.

His fastball averaged 97.3 mph, which would still put him in the 93rd percentile (if he had thrown enough to qualify). He threw 27 sliders that spun at more than 2,600 rpm while traveling more than 90 mph. Despite three starts, the total number of sliders that met both parameters was 17th in the majors. It remains an elite pitch among elite pitches. And he’s got a winter now to work on honing his command of it.

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Progress on pitching development: The rocket-like return of Kumar Rocker from elbow surgery was hardly the only significant development on the pitching front. For the first time in a long time, the Rangers may be deeper in pitching prospects than position players. And they are pitching prospects with real upside. The most recent edition of Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects includes three Rangers pitchers: Rocker (29), Alejandro Rosario (83) and Emiliano Teodo (94).

While no team wants to go into a season relying almost exclusively on young pitching, it’s necessary to have viable arms in the system ready to step in when guys go down. While Rocker will likely go to spring with a chance to win a rotation spot, it’s likely that both Rosario and Teodo will be depth options with high upside at some point in 2025.

And this does not account for Jack Leiter, who got hit around in his MLB debut, but has a high aptitude for learning and it’s not far-fetched to think he could make another significant step in 2025.

Josh Smith’s utility: A versatile bench is imperative for a championship club and ultimately that’s Smith’s role. While Smith did appear to wear down late to more than doubling his previous high for playing time (he had 592 plate appearances in 2024), he was the lone player on the roster whose offense actually improved from 2023. As the Rangers look to better manage workload for Marcus Semien, take care of Corey Seager and be prepared for the possibility (based on past experience) that Josh Jung will miss some time, Smith gives them a great option.

Keep Smith between 350-400 plate appearances - a bit more than he was used in 2022 and 2023 and a bit less than this past season - and you might get max production out of him. Consider that at the 400 plate appearance mark this season, he was slashing .282/.375/.442/.817. Get him a start a week at second, short and third and one at DH and you keep more players fresh and Smith more involved.

Cody Bradford’s pitchability: Given the fact Bradford hasn’t thrown 80 innings in a season, yet, maybe it’s a bit of a stretch, but, hey, we’re committed to a list of five here. So, we’ll stretch.

On the downside, maybe Bradford is a left-handed version of Dane Dunning, whom the league has seemed to figure out. On the other hand, Bradford has a strikeout-to-walk rate of double what Dunning had. His fastball command is exceptional and so he doesn’t create trouble for himself with walks. Among those with at least 20 starts and 100 innings over the last two years, Bradford’s 4.84 strikeout-to-walk rate (a metric on which the Rangers put a lot of weight) ranks 14th of 188 qualifiers.

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Bottom line: He knows the value of Strike One and has great command. He might not be a top of the rotation starter, but he fits in a rotation. And successful teams find a way to get contributions from more than just first-round picks. Bradford was a sixth-round pick in 2019. Dallas Keuchel, like Bradford, was a soft-tossing lefty who was a sixth round pick. Won a Cy Young Award. Bradford might not provide that kind of impact, but he’s let the Rangers know he belongs in the rotation.

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