The visitors’ dugout was more densely populated than usual on Monday, with baseball’s rules paving the way for six players to be added to the Rangers’ roster along with — not by rule but more in the manner of salute — another three members of the organization.
Minor league pitching coordinator Danny Clark was invited to join the major-league club in New York, as was catcher Chuck Moorman, an eight-year veteran in the Texas farm system with all of six AAA at-bats, asked to serve as a second bullpen catcher on the road trip.
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The third man summoned to Yankee Stadium by the Rangers was the first of their seven minor-league managers to have his 2019 season end. 32-year-old Carlos Cardoza, younger than five players on the Rangers’ big-league roster, had just completed his first year at the helm of the Rangers’ Rookie-level club in the Arizona League after managing the organization’s Dominican Summer League squad for three seasons.
Nobody seemed to mind that he was in town early. He had, after all, just won a championship — the AZL Rangers’ first title since 2012, a year when that club’s roster included players like Joey Gallo, Nomar Mazara, Ronald Guzman, Lewis Brinson, Nick Williams, Alex Claudio and Keone Kela. Cardoza is among the faces of the Rangers’ surging player development program and the resounding amount of success the team experienced in the minor leagues this season. Even more importantly, he is an example of how team success at the lower levels feeds into the organization’s longer-range goals at the major-league level.
“Carlos is so good at establishing a winning culture, teaching guys how to be pros and demanding more from the players,” says Rangers GM Jon Daniels. “He’s just got such a good feel for it. And he’s unbelievably driven — always looking for feedback on how he can improve. He’s such a great representative of what we want to be about.”
What the Rangers want to be about — this year no different from any other — is developing winning talent from within. It’s more cost-efficient, more reliable and, in many ways, more rewarding than depending on free agency to build a club. And, make no mistake, the talent part of the equation is what matters most. But the Rangers are dogged in their belief that winning is an integral piece to developing young players’ mentality and something that could feed similar success down the road for the big club.
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“We develop skills and mentality in the minor leagues that affect all aspects of the players’ development,” says Matt Hagen, whose Low-A Hickory Crawdads went 83-51 — the most victories by a Rangers Low-A club in 30 years and the sixth-best record ever by a full-season Texas affiliate — despite suiting up 51 players. “One of the greatest attributes that we can develop is a winning mentality and an expectation to win every night. Winning is not a given because of talent. Guys have to learn how to win.”
In 2019, the Rangers farm system did plenty of that.
Texas finished the minor-league regular season earlier this week with a .567 winning percentage spread across six stateside clubs and two in the Dominican Republic. It was the highest minor-league win rate in baseball this year and the best mark a Rangers system has posted since 1973.
The organization won more often than any other in baseball despite its AAA and AA clubs finishing the year with losing records, which may in part be a byproduct of shuttling players like Willie Calhoun, Danny Santana, Brock Burke, Jose Trevino, Emmanuel Clase and more to the big club. Behind them, High-A Down East, Low-A Hickory, Short-Season A Spokane, Rookie-level AZL, and the DSL-1 clubs all reached the playoffs. Among all of the Rangers’ affiliates below AA, only their second DSL squad fell short of the postseason.
The DSL-1 club, after posting a 55-15 regular-season record, came three outs short of reaching the 45-team league’s championship series. Cardoza’s AZL squad swept its best-of-three title series against the Indians by 10-0 and 7-2 scores. Down East, Hickory and Spokane launched their playoff runs Wednesday night.
(Down East traded 3-0 wins in a doubleheader to kick off their best-of-five series against Fayetteville; Hickory was outhit by Delmarva in its best-of-three series opener, 10-4, but won the game, 4-3; and Spokane erased an early 3-0 deficit to tie Tri-City in the seventh inning of Game One in the teams’ best-of-three opener, eventually falling in 12 innings, 4-3.)
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Franchises never prioritize minor-league win percentages over the true goal, which is the development of big-league talent. But playoff seasons on the farm aren’t irrelevant when it comes to the bigger picture. “Winning in the minors is usually a byproduct of talent and good training,” Daniels suggests. “That’s what’s most encouraging here. It’s a credit to our staffs for the work they’ve put in, and a sign that the depth and talent level of the players is really improved. It’s never enough, but it’s encouraging.”
“I think experiencing winning, even at the minor-league level, can be an integral part of players’ development,” Cardoza adds. “But it’s more importantly so if the winning is a reflection of a winning culture. Teams can win off of talent, but when you pair talent with a winning atmosphere, with the things Woody and Rags talk about, then there’s a chance for it to be special and sustainable as these kids continue to move up through the system.”
“Woody,” of course, is Rangers manager Chris Woodward, whom Cardoza spent as much time with as he could during spring training and again this week in New York. “Rags” is Corey Ragsdale, the Rangers’ minor league field coordinator who doubled as this year’ manager in Down East, where the Wood Ducks went 87-52 in the regular season, breaking a Rangers record for wins by a High-A affiliate. Pulling double duty helped him reestablish his value on the field — he won two league championships in four seasons prior to being promoted to his current role in 2016 — as well as be able to practice the intangible values he preaches on a day-to-day basis with a group of players.
“The biggest thing to me is how these guys went about it almost every day,” Ragsdale says about a roster that suited up 50 different players. “They loved competing, and when it was game time, they got after it. It didn’t matter if it was a 7 p.m. game, or a 7 a.m. commuter for an 11 a.m. game after a 7 p.m. game the night before. They answered the bell and played with the intent to win. I think that’s all we ask for — for them to give the right attitude and effort every day. If they do those things, it will take care of so much along the way.”
That bore out in the standings. But, Ragsdale says: “(Winning) really is not the end-all, be-all.” The “end-all, be-all” is talent, something that’s perceived as more of a mixed bag on the farm than the teams’ overall success. Industry publications view the Rangers system in widely different ways. Baseball America ranked the Texas system 27th this summer, up one spot from its offseason ranking. Baseball Prospectus was far more enchanted, pegging the system as ninth-best coming into the season. Both MLB.com and FanGraphs have Texas comfortably in between, treading among the league’s middle tier as far as minor-league talent is concerned.
MLB.com senior writer Jim Callis, who has made a career out of evaluating baseball prospects, acknowledges that the Rangers could justifiably be ranked considerably higher than the No. 14 slot he has them at — or lower.
“It’s such a subjective exercise,” Callis says. “How much weight do you put on player ceilings? On their floors? Do you penalize clubs for risk? The industry tends to give more credence to players who are closer to the big leagues, and it’s tougher with players who are further away. If you were to measure the gap between how good a group of prospects could be versus how good they are now, with the Rangers, that gap is as wide as anybody’s. It’s just tough to get a handle on them.”
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Case in point, Baseball Prospectus’ lofty ranking, which lead prospect writer Jeffrey Paternostro readily admits is due to the publication’s predisposition toward high-ceiling talents.
“We ranked the Rangers as a top-10 system in baseball while noting that their organization is almost designed to rank five spots higher for us than anyone else,” says Paternostro. “We really liked the tools-laden profiles at the top of their organization. A few Top 101 prospects like Bubba Thompson, Anderson Tejeda and Julio Pablo Martinez struggled with injuries and underperformance this year. That gives the system a bit of a hit, but they still remain tools-laden at the lower levels, and perhaps this year’s crop of toolsy A-ball guys like Hans Crouse, Sam Huff and Sherten Apostel will fare better going forward.”
FanGraphs’ Kiley McDaniel notes that his website’s tepid ranking of the Texas system owes itself in part to the team’s wave of pitching injuries. However, he says, “There’s about 10 players with a chance to be top-100 types in the next 12 months, so there’s now some quality depth. But our empirical farm-rankings system is heavily skewed toward top 50-type prospects, and that guy hasn’t materialized yet.”
It’s been no secret the last few years that the strength of the Rangers system has been at its lower levels, a reality that may help explain the disparity in publication perception. Not only did clubs at the system’s bottom five levels all reach the postseason this year, the bottom three (Spokane, Arizona and DSL) were all playoff teams in 2018 as well. Many of the players who experienced playoff baseball last year have since moved up the chain and are repeating the feat. It’s a group that perhaps hasn’t yet caught the fancy of the publications who rank prospects and farm systems, but within the game — and certainly within the organization — the Rangers’ lower-level talent is drawing attention as they put results up.
Before long, those same players won’t be lower-level secrets any longer.
“I think you’re seeing that wave of talent moving up through the system,” Daniels says. “I think if you’re winning at the minor league level and it’s older players, it’s not a lot to get excited about, but we’ve got the talent and a chance to play them at the big-league level in a matter of years, so that part is exciting.”
A front-office executive for another club agrees with the assessment, and not from a wins-and-losses standpoint. “Their lowest levels have a chance to yield the highest-ceiling talent, from upside arms to some interesting bats,” he says. “Their most recent draft should be viewed very favorably in this early window, and if they can push the players up the chain and have good fortune with health, the system will take several big steps forward in a national context, and more importantly, eventually help fund the big league team with talent.”
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For now, though, it’s about cultivating that talent with the right mentality.
Daniels said the club’s decision this week to dismiss AAA Nashville manager Jason Wood and AA Frisco manager Joe Mikulik and several other coaches at the system’s upper levels shouldn’t be read as a disparagement of the men. “I’ve got a lot of respect for all these guys,” says Daniels. “(I) certainly think, in different circumstances, they’re very worthy of opportunities to help. They’ve impacted a lot of our players … I literally don’t have anything bad to say about any of the guys on an individual basis, or as a group.”
But, he added, “There’s just some things we want to try to accomplish going forward, and I think we’re better to structure it in a different way.”
If those things go correctly, the potential payoff is more chances to hit on talent in a very deep system, one littered with the sort of lottery tickets for whom success could change a franchise’s long-term fortunes.
“The No. 22 prospect in the Texas system may be better than the No. 22 prospect in almost any other system,” says Callis. “Not all of their high-end guys at the lower levels will reach their ceiling, but if they did, wow.”
Cardoza has been an integral force in the player-development effort at those lower levels the last couple seasons. His first day with the big-league club this week — his first time, incidentally, to visit either Yankee Stadium and his first trip to New York of any kind since he was seven years old, when his father, Carlos Sr., was earning his doctorate in Christian Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary — was stunted a bit. The first pitch was delayed nearly three hours by rain; the final pitch, three hours later, sealed the first shutout of a Yankees team in 220 games.
“With that long delay my first day there, being inside, you kind of forget where you are,” Cardoza says. “Then you walk out of the tunnel, and you see ‘Yankee Stadium’ in big letters and sense the atmosphere. Definitely a wow moment. Then you go try to win a game.”
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The Rangers have won a lot of games in 2019. Not as often as they would have liked at the big-league level, or in AAA or AA. But at every other level, they won a lot. And there will be more than just new managers in Nashville and Frisco in 2020. There are waves of players accustomed to postgame handshakes who are leaving Class A behind, with the Rangers counting on them as key components of the new brand of “special and sustainable” they are trying to build.
It’s never enough, as the GM says. But it’s encouraging.
EXIT VELO
- Frisco RHP Tyler Phillips struck out a season-best 10 hitters in his 2019 finale, scattering three hits and two walks over 6.1 innings while allowing one Northwest Arkansas run. The 21-year-old struggled in his first eight RoughRiders starts (1-6, 7.64 with an opponents’ slash line of .340/.373/.560), but he straightened things out after that, going 6-3, 2.95 (.209/.261/.408) in his 10 subsequent appearances.
- Phillips’ teammate RHP Demarcus Evans struck out two hitters in a scoreless inning in the final game of the RoughRiders’ season, giving him an even 100 strikeouts in 60 innings between Down East and Frisco to go along with an ERA of 0.90 and only 23 hits allowed.
- Despite a slow start to his first full pro season, Down East OF J.P. Martinez finished fourth in the Carolina League in home runs (14), 11th in total bases (172), 10th in RBI (58, in 113 games) and fourth in stolen bases (28). The 23-year-old Cuban hit .183/.236/.337 through the end of May (47 games) but put up a .290/.367/.474 line thereafter (76 games).
- Hickory OF Pedro Gonzalez, who came over from the Rockies in the 2017 deal that sent Jonathan Lucroy to Colorado, finished the season leading the South Atlantic League in home runs (23). The 21-year-old’s previous season high was 12.
- Spokane 1B Blaine Crim, the Rangers’ 19th-round pick in June as a senior out of Division II Mississippi College, was named Northwest League MVP after hitting .335/.398/.528 with a league-leading 45 RBI. The 22-year-old hit eight home runs in 53 games.
Levi Weaver contributed reporting to this story.
Photo Credit: Napoleon Pichardo