A key factor beside upside that helped guide Rangers' July prospect trades

Jamey is a lifelong Rangers fan who has been blogging for nearly 20 years at newbergreport.com and traces his fandom back to the days of Bump Wills, Bert Blyleven, and the powder blues.

When a club is positioned firmly in the seller’s category in July and August, the template is clear: Move a veteran to a contender who believes it can count on him in exchange for a prospect or two (or more) you can bet on.  Stack up a few of those veterans whose contracts don’t extend beyond your development phase, and you’ve got an opportunity to inject your farm system with a swarm of young players and maybe even accelerate the timetable for escaping that seller group.

Sometimes the decisions are easy.  Even rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, lefthander Joe Palumbo was a lock to be added to the roster last winter; the Rangers were not going to risk losing the 23-year-old in the Rule 5 Draft.  Less certain to be draft-protected was a player who had just repeated AA for a second year, didn’t do much dynamically on offense, and was moved all over the field as a minor-leaguer, but imagine where the Rangers would be had they left Isiah Kiner-Falefa off the roster, figuring they’d never lose him in December, and were wrong.

Looking at the process and the state of the Rangers’ farm system might shed some added light on why Texas targeted the players it did when trading Cole Hamels, Keone Kela, Jake Diekman, and Jesse Chavez — and when the club moved Brett Nicholas in April and future considerations to the Giants early in July.

The annual decision matrix leading to the November 20 deadline to add non-roster players to the 40-man roster to shield them from that December’s Rule 5 Draft runs deep.  While the threshold question centers around who will be eligible for that draft (generally speaking, it includes all players not on a 40-man roster who were (1) 18 or younger on the June 5 before they signed their first pro contract and are facing at least their fifth Rule 5 Draft or (2) 19 or older at that time and facing at least their fourth Rule 5 Draft), a lot more goes into it.

Paul Kruger, the Rangers’ Assistant Director of Player Development, talks about the complexity of the evaluations, which involve a number of club officials.  “There are many factors that go into putting together our reserve rosters during the off-season,” says Kruger, in his ninth year with the organization.  “It’s a group effort by the entire baseball operations department to make sure all areas of expertise are involved in making the best decision possible for the organization — for the short and long term.”

Once the club identifies which players are draft-eligible, the review becomes more nuanced, says Kruger.  “We assess how they could fit into our Major League roster throughout the upcoming season, plus their long-term role in the organization, along with the likelihood we believe they would be able to stick on another club’s 25-man roster for the entire season.  We take these factors and others into account and lean on each discipline in the organization’s evaluation/development programs, and come to our final roster decisions.”

In summary, the organization might assess the following about each player eligible for the next Rule 5 Draft:

• Room on the 40-man roster (which involves projecting how many spots will need to be preserved for Major League additions over the winter)
• Roster fit, short- and long-term
• The player’s development stage and projection (since his options clock would start ticking)
• Assessed likelihood that the player would be drafted if not rostered . . .
• . . . and that he would stick in the big leagues for the entire season with his new club

The population of prospects to make roster calls on this winter runs deep.  It does not include players like Leody Taveras, Tyler Phillips, Kyle Cody, Anderson Tejeda, Emmanuel Clase, Demarcus Evans, Curtis Terry, Miguel Aparicio, and Joe Barlow, who won’t be draft-eligible until after the 2019 season, or Cole Ragans, Sam Huff, Rollie Lacy, Jason Bahr, A.J. Alexy, Tyreque Reed, Alex Speas, Jake Latz, Tyree Thompson, Tyler Thomas, Seth Nordlin, and David Garcia, who are ineligible before December 2020.  Hans Crouse, Julio Pablo Martinez, Bubba Thompson, and Chris Seise are among those who cannot be drafted until December 2021, if not in the big leagues by then.

Texas is also owed three players to be named later (one from the Cubs in the Hamels deal, one from the Pirates in the Kela deal, and one from the Diamondbacks in the Diekman deal), and while all we know about those three players is that (by rule) they’re not in the big leagues now and haven’t been since the date of the respective trades, we can assume they are non-roster players (who’d have to clear revocable trade waivers otherwise).  We might also assume, given the Rangers’ history, that they will be lower-level players with higher upside, rather than players with less ceiling who might be closer to the big leagues.

Another reason we can probably assume the three unidentified players are further away is that Texas likely wanted to limit the number of players who would need to be added to the 40-man roster this winter in order to ensure they couldn’t be drafted away.  At the moment, the only two players of the many that Texas traded for in July who will be draft-eligible this off-season are lefthander Taylor Hearn (from the Kela trade) and righthander Wei-Chieh Huang (from the Diekman deal).  The others — Clase (from the Padres for Nicholas), Bahr (from the Giants [with Cory Gearrin] for future considerations and the assumption of Austin Jackson’s contract), Thomas (from the Cubs for Chavez), and Lacy (from the Cubs [with veteran Eddie Butler and a player to be named]) — are not.

Hearn and Huang are virtual locks to be added to the roster.  The promising Hearn figures in among the club’s starting pitcher prospects who could be ready for the Major Leagues by this time next year.  The 24-year-old Huang, on the strength of his fastball command, plus curve, and swing-and-miss changeup, should factor in soon as a middle relief candidate.

Aside from those two, who are currently pitching for AA Frisco, another pair of prospects who are strong bets to join the roster by November 20 — and could even be rostered before then, if the club decides to get their auditions underway in September — are AAA Round Rock outfielder Scott Heineman and left-handed Frisco reliever C.D. Pelham.  Righthander Edinson Volquez is a sure bet to be added as well, as otherwise there would be nothing standing in the way of another club taking a Rule 5 flier on the veteran who has been here since February on a two-year non-roster deal.

Beyond those five, there’s a tier of players who will likely be at the forefront of the internal discussions on the roster, including Round Rock relievers Brady Feigl and Reed Garrett — each of whom could also see Arlington in September themselves — as well as High-A Down East righthander Michael Matuella and Low-A Hickory outfielder Pedro Gonzalez, whose seasons have not gone as well as hoped but whose ceilings are such that the club may not want to risk exposing them to the draft.  Frisco righty Edgar Arredondo, who doesn’t have the same upside as some of the others under consideration (and thus may be viewed as a safer risk to leave exposed), was having a tremendous season for the Wood Ducks and has been solid more often than not since joining Frisco late in June.

A list of others whom the Rangers will talk about at length before ruling them out might include Round Rock infielder Andy Ibanez and outfielder Hunter Cole; Frisco lefthanders Wes Benjamin and Adam Choplick and infielders Josh Morgan (who also catches) and Michael De Leon; Down East righthanders Jairo Beras and Royce Bolinger (both converted outfielders), Emerson Martinez, and Jake Lemoine, southpaw Locke St. John, and catcher Melvin Novoa; and Hickory catcher Yohel Pozo.  Another unique case will be 29-year-old righthander Brett Eibner, who was promoted last week from the rookie-level Arizona League to Short-Season A Spokane as his full-blown conversion from the outfield to the mound, now just four appearances in, takes hold.

Ultimately, Texas might convince itself that those players are not likely to be draft targets by other clubs — though evaluations could certainly change over the final month on the farm.

Injured righthanders Johnny Fasola and Scott Williams, Frisco outfielder/first baseman Preston Beck, Down East infielder Andretty Cordero, and Hickory infielder Yonny Hernandez will be eligible as well.

You can be sure that Texas will make sure no team gets its hands on Hearn, Huang, Heineman, or Pelham in December — but also that the Rangers don’t want to lose guys like Matuella, Gonzalez, Feigl, Garrett, Arredondo, or a host of others who they believe can eventually contribute in the big leagues.  The club could decide that there will be enough roster room this off-season to keep a couple players off that second list, but for every draft-eligible player acquired this summer, that’s another player from the system who theoretically ends up on the exposed list — and as Kiner-Falefa proved this year, sometimes a player who went into a winter as less than a lock to be rostered turns out to be virtually indispensable to the club.

In past years, the Rangers got away with leaving Ronald Guzman, Pedro Strop, Travis Hafner, and Frankie Francisco exposed to the draft — and they managed to slide Odubel Herrera through in 2013 but didn’t get so lucky by leaving him exposed a second time the next winter.  Feigl, Garrett, and Arredondo have gone undrafted before and the Rangers might not want to risk that happening again.

These are big decisions with possibly significant consequences.  Texas certainly won’t turn away any opportunity to add high-end young talent to this system, but when the club’s pro scouts made their recommendations as trade talks develop, you can be sure that Rule 5 Draft eligibility was noted right alongside whether the player happened to tote a plus-plus breaking ball, or was a 70-grade defender.  The more draft-eligible players you add to the mix, the more players you end up making available in the draft.

It’s fun to high-five on the development of a player like Guzman that you were able to slide once through the draft, or on the foresight to make space on the roster for someone like Kiner-Falefa who was less than a slam dunk.  It’s not as fun to see Herrera making All-Star Teams.

The Rangers weren’t going to turn Hearn down when they got the chance to pick him up for Kela.  It appears Huang could impact the Texas bullpen within a year of Diekman departing.  But none of the other many prospects that the Rangers picked up in July — and likely none they will add in August or September to complete three of those trades — will be draft-eligible this winter, and there’s a very good chance that that’s no accident.

EXIT VELO

• On Tuesday night, three of the Rangers’ top pitching prospects stood out.  At High-A, Down East lefthander Joe Palumbo set 11 down on strikes over five scoreless innings, allowing only two hits and no walks.  At the Low-A level, Hickory righthander Tyler Phillips punched out 13 in seven shutout frames, scattering six hits without issuing a walk.  Hans Crouse struck out two in a scoreless inning of work (nine pitches, eight strikes) in the Northwest League-Pioneer Baseball League All-Star Game, tripping radar guns at 100 mph on one pitch.  Crouse’s teammate Curtis Terry won the NWL-PBL Home Run Derby.
• On Wednesday, the 19-year-old Crouse was promoted to Hickory for the minor league season’s final month, after going 5-1, 2.37 in eight starts (.179/.238/.250 opponents’ slash line, 47 strikeouts and 11 walks in 38 innings) for Short-Season A Spokane.  Replacing Crouse in the Spokane rotation will be promising Dominican righthander Yerry Rodriguez, promoted from the rookie-level Arizona League, where the 20-year-old had fanned 55 while walking only three in 38.1 innings of work.
• Of the 69 prospects traded in the six weeks leading up to the trade deadline, Baseball America ranks Hearn ninth overall (and Huang 20^th, Bahr 33^rd, Lacy 63^rd, and Thomas 66^th).
• Here’s an outstanding video interview the RoughRiders did with Hearn the day after his dominant RoughRiders debut on Friday.  He’s scheduled to make his second Frisco start tomorrow night at Northwest Arkansas.
• And finally, Eno Sarris of The Athletic did a fantastic job breaking down and talking to Indians righthander Trevor Bauer and Reds first baseman Joey Votto about one pitch, a slider, that Bauer threw Votto in July.  It’s a very cool, unique story.Photo courtesy: Caitlyn Epes – Frisco Roughriders