Minor League Opening Day shows how pitching has become the strength of Rangers’ farm system

FRISCO — It had been more than 600 days. There have been a lot of changes since the Frisco Roughriders last played a game. Back then, it was at Dr Pepper Stadium. Now, it’s Riders Field. Back then, the center of the organization was former Rangers owner Chuck Greenberg; now it’s former Rangers broadcaster Victor Rojas.

And get this: The focus on the field was on pitching. Pitching.

You read that right.

As the Rangers kicked off the minor league season with a 5-2 Roughriders win Tuesday, 18 months after the last official minor league season was completed, pitching is where the strength of the farm system lies. Now, the cynic might surmise that’s because top prospects Josh Jung, a third baseman, and Sam Huff, a catcher, are both recovering from surgeries and because center fielder Leody Taveras has already been demoted.

But it’s also not by default. Dare we say it, because, as you know, pitching is kind of fickle and also prone to injury, but there is strength in pitching in the system. Strength in the form of depth.

“We are really well-positioned and poised to take a significant step this season,” said assistant general manager Mike Daly, who oversees player development.

Take Tuesday’s opening day starter for Double-A Frisco, Tim Brennan, for example. He is not the top prospect on the RoughRiders staff. Or the second. He might not be the fifth. But he’s a prospect, nonetheless, a guy who threw 124 innings in his first professional outing in 2019 with a commendable, if not overpowering, sinker. Before the game, Daly said he expected to see a “lot of ground balls out there.”

He got three. In the first five pitches of the night. And more after that. Brennan, 24, pitched into the fifth inning Tuesday against Midland of the Oakland organization, primarily wielding an 89-91 mph sinker. Those are not sexy velocity numbers. But when he left, he’d allowed a pair of singles and no runs in 60 pitches. Of the 13 outs he recorded, 11 came on grounders (eight) or strikeouts (three).

In case you are wondering why he didn’t go longer since he was rolling, the Rangers, along with all of baseball, are protecting their pitchers with utmost caution. With good reason. The COVID-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of the minor league season. Pitchers threw, of course, but a lot of it was in informal workouts, not under the eyes of instructors.

A few, like right-hander Cole Winn, the best prospect at Frisco, did eventually get to the alternate site and pitch in some simulated games there and then a few more in instructional camp. How to evaluate all of that is a mystery to just about everybody.

Winn, the Rangers top draft pick in 2018, was officially credited with no innings in 2020. His sum total of professional innings going into his Friday start is 68. He didn’t pitch in 2018 as part of the Rangers’ “deload” program for high school pitchers from that draft. He pitched at low Class A Hickory in 2019. He is jumping the high Class A level straight to Double-A.

“I feel like I got in a full year of work,” Winn said this week. “I threw the whole time. It was about as close to normal with, you know, not actually having a season. But it’s also different throwing to your own team. In that way, I feel like I am kind of skipping a level. I feel pretty fortunate to be able to do that.”

Said Daly: “Like with Cole, we’ve got a couple of these guys with these aggressive [placements]. They were going to have to go through these levels one way or another. So, a lot of that is factoring in the talent and skill and the makeup. These guys are big-time competitors and we think they are ready for it. There might be some bumps in the road, but there might be some guys that prove they are clearly ready.”

Winn is part of a six-man rotation at Frisco that includes right-handers Yerry Rodriguez, A.J. Alexy and Hans Crouse. All are among the Rangers top 25 prospects, according to MLB Pipeline. Frisco is the tip of the spear for the pitching rebirth. If the Rangers are to accelerate their return to contention, members of the future contending rotation will come from this staff.

But the depth goes further. Daly, citing the late scout Don Welke, talked about the need for “waves,” of pitching talent. And with the current state of injuries in baseball, that’s exceptionally clear.

So, it was good for the Rangers to see Owen White, the second-round pick in 2018, make the opening day start for Class A Down East, even if he only went 2 2/3 innings Tuesday. White, Forney’s Mason Englert, 2016 first-rounder Cole Ragans and reliever Nick Snyder were part of a different wave, a wave of Tommy John surgeries that swept the organization in 2019. All are back and on active rosters.

At Hickory, now advanced Class A, right-hander Justin Slaten, the third-round pick in 2019, opened the season. Slaten and right-hander Dane Acker, who is at Down East, were the talk of Rangers minor league spring training.

There are others. There will need to be. Pitching development is often a process of attrition. On Tuesday, though, it was about promise. Opening Day offered them that.

Find more Rangers coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.