The Rangers lost their entire middle infield: now what? (It's Condor time)

First, it was Delino DeShields. Then Rougned Odor. Then was Elvis Andrus. Now, the Texas Rangers find themselves in the unusual position of figuring out how to piecemeal an entire up-the-middle out of Jurickson Profar and a tool box full of electrical cords and this roll of duct tape from atop the refrigerator.

That’s a joke, of course: both rolls of duct tape requested (and were granted) their release from AAA Round Rock. Darwin Barney did so before Spring Training even ended, and Trevor Plouffe did so when Isiah Kiner-Falefa was the one to get the call-up in the wake of Rougned Odor’s injury. “If they had been in AAA, they would have been more of a consideration,” GM Jon Daniels said today. “…but no.”

Instead, the move will be the long-awaited call-up of Ronald Guzman, the 6’5″, 23-year-old Dominican first baseman that the Rangers initially signed in July of 2011 .

Joey Gallo has played 212 big-league games, and those stack up thusly: 92 games at third base, 73 at first base, 37 in left field, 1 in center field, and 9 at DH. Gallo isn’t likely to move to third just yet, not with Adrián Beltre healthy and manning the hot corner. But Daniels said today that there’s a reasonable chance that we could see a lineup that includes Guzman at first, Gallo in left field, and — back to the original question — Drew Robinson playing a little at second base. Robinson has played seven of his 66 big-league games (and 193 of his 768 minor league games) at the keystone corner.

But wait… what are we going to do about center field? After all, Delino DeShields is also on the disabled list for the next couple of weeks recovering from surgery to remove a broken hamate bone, and Robinson has been getting the bulk of the playing time there.

He’ll play there, too, says Daniels. When he does, Isiah Kiner-Falefa will get time at second base. When Robinson shifts to the infield dirt, Carlos Tocci will be playing in center field.

We should pause here to remind readers: No one promised this article would explain how the Rangers would make the postseason this year. It was only implied that we would tell you how the team plans to get by without inventing the position of ninth baseman.

There were other options, of course. Here they are, along with the reasons for not bringing them to the big leagues right now, even with these dire circumstances.

Hanser Alberto can’t be feeling great about his future with the team; he plays all four infield positions and was the hero of Game Two of the 2015 ALDS. But Alberto isn’t on the 40-man roster, and adding him to the big-league club would have meant designating someone else for assignment. Is it worth losing a prospect to bring up Alberto instead of Guzman? Maybe not, for an organization that is looking more to the future than the present. Who knows if Eliezer Alvarez will ever make the big leagues, but if he’s the one that keeps the Rangers from making a Tanner Roark for Cristian Guzman trade on their next World Series run, you could forgive the caution.

Willie Calhoun could have come up and either played second base himself (that’s his original position) or played left, allowing Rua to move to center field and Robinson to second base. If you’re playing MLB the Show, that’s the move you make. But the Rangers front office is insistent that they view Calhoun as a long-term asset and want him to work on his defense in left field. A week of games in AAA isn’t going to be the difference between “defense isn’t ready” and “defense is fine, let’s go”.

“We’re letting Willie get his reps in left field,” Daniels said today in a conference call with the beat writers. “I don’t think after a week’s worth of games, that’s enough to evaluate. I want to give him a fair amount of time,” the GM said.

If you’re starting to think “okay, okay, it’s time to get to the third option,” please allow me to remind you that the Rangers made trades to contend in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2016. Your next option on the 40-man roster is …the aforementioned Eliezer Alvarez.

So it’s Guzman, who is currently hitting .412 at AAA Round Rock in a week, a rare bright spot in a horrid start for the Express (even Calhoun is hitting a mere .206 with a .553 OPS), who fell to 1-7 last night.

That’s not to say that Guzman isn’t worthy of the call-up. He hit .298 last year in AAA.

But batting average doesn’t always tell a full story. What other numbers do we have? Do we have scouting reports? Yes, dear reader, we have both. First of all, his on-base percentage was .372 last season in 527 AAA appearances. That’s good! But he also only hit 12 home runs. For a first baseman, that’s not great. Guzman knows this and told us this winter that he had been working on his power (here’s a profile on Guzman from Kevin Carter this past offseason).

“For him, I’d probably try it,” says one former scout. “…but I’d be a bit concerned that the contact abilities aren’t good enough for him to do well with an elevated K rate.”

But isn’t contact Guzman’s strength? “Guzman’s got the coordination part down,” he says. “But he’s not exactly a plus bat-speed guy.”

Another current scout concurs: “He’s a candidate, for sure,” he agreed. “He’s definitely trying to get more lift this season, but it’s still an opposite-field approach; he doesn’t turn on the ball well.”

The scout went on to say that Guzman’s arms are just so long that it’s hard to shorten his swing and pull fastballs. For road games in Houston (which happen to be the next three games on the docket) that approach is fine. (“That’s something Houston did that was really smart,” the same scout tells me “Build the team to the stadium. Everybody that isn’t Altuve or Correa is just aiming at the Crawford boxes, and it’s working.”) But for Globe Life Park, built to be a haven for left-handed pull hitters, it will be interesting to see if Guzman’s power is enough to play at the big-league level, or if he’ll find himself back in Round Rock when DeShields or Odor return to the lineup.