Texas Rangers: 2018 minor league awards
The Texas Rangers found themselves at the bottom of a suddenly very competitive division in 2018. A number of young players began to emerge in 2018, and more could be on the way soon!
As part of our continuing coverage at Call to the Pen of the minor leagues, we will be covering each organization’s top players for 2018. The coverage will go in reverse order of record. Today, we will look at the Texas Rangers.
We are going to review the system’s leaders for each organization statistically, then choose one hitter and one pitcher to honor for every team. This will be primarily based on statistical performance, though some “age relative to level” could come into play, so a very impressive season from a 28-year-old in AA will rank below a nearly as impressive season from a 20-year-old at the same level.
After we review each organization’s hitter and pitcher of the year, we will close out October with Call To The Pen’s Minor League team of the year. That will lead into November starting our team top 10 prospect lists. In other words, there will be plenty of minor league content on the way at CTTP, so keep coming back for more each day this offseason!!
Texas Rangers minor leagues
Long known for their proficiency to take high-ceiling players in the draft and their established presence in Latin America, the Texas Rangers farm system tends to behave the way a system full of high-ceiling players would – ebbing and flowing based on the failure rate of those high-ceiling players, but when they do hit on a player, he hits big!
The Rangers attempted to patch pitching together this year, but they found that did not work, and they’re likely going to see a number of young arms filter into the rotation and bullpen in 2019 as they begin to work into at least a re-tooling time, if not a full-on rebuild.
Before we offer up awards on the season, let’s take a look at the system’s statistical leaders:
Organization Leaders (min. 150 PA, 50 IP)
BA: Diosbel Arias .366
OBP: Heriberto Hernandez .464
SLG: Heriberto Hernandez .635
OPS: Heriberto Hernandez 1.099
R: Anderson Tejeda 76
H: Scott Heineman 137
2B: Willie Calhoun 32
3B: Leody Taveras and Eric Jenkins 7
HR: Tommy Joseph 21
RBI: Anderson Tejeda 74
SB: Yonny Hernandez 46
TB: Anderson Tejeda 205
W: Tyler Phillips 12
G: Reed Garrett 51
GS: Emerson Martinez 24
IP: Emerson Martinez 137
SV: R.J. Alvarez 24
K: A.J. Alexy 138
ERA: Martin Buitimea 1.06
WHIP: Ronny Henriquez 0.78
K/9: Demarcus Evans 16.6
K/BB: Yerry Rodriguez 10.25