He was mired in an 0-for-10 skid that produced 11 outs to kick off his Rangers career, at least on the unofficial ledger of the Cactus League, bringing his career total to 0 for 19 in two big-league camps, with a .000 on-base percentage to match.
And Eli White’s new manager couldn’t have been more effusive in his praise.
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“He’s a special kid,” says Chris Woodward of White, who logged 0-for-2’s in each of the club’s first five spring training games. “I just want to see him (play). He’s been really, really impressive.”
The 24-year-old White was a shortstop at Clemson University. He was exclusively a shortstop in his first pro season with Oakland and virtually all of his second season. The A’s put him in the outfield nine times that year (2017) and after he opened the 2018 season as AA Midland’s starting shortstop, Oakland began to sprinkle in other defensive assignments. A few days at third base here, a couple at second base there. A stray look or two in center field.
It mirrors the way the new Ranger has been used by the club this spring.
En route to a breakout .306/.388/.450 season with AA Midland in which he led the Texas League in base hits, triples and runs and finished third in walks and fifth in doubles (followed by a .344/.406/.459 performance in the Arizona Fall League), White was no longer an everyday shortstop. In fact, after the first month of the season, there wasn’t another month all year in which most of his assignments came at his most familiar position. Playing 51 percent of his RockHound innings at second base — a position he hadn’t played in college or previously at the pro level — he was named by Texas League coaches and scouts as the best second baseman in the circuit. After the season, Baseball America tabbed White as Oakland’s No. 8 prospect (but No. 18 for Texas) and the No. 12 second base prospect in baseball.
Both the bat and the versatility drew Texas to White when, just before Christmas, he was shipped to the Rangers in a three-team deal with Tampa Bay that sent Jurickson Profar — another former shortstop whose career has seen him move all over the field — to the A’s. Among the first things the Rangers told White was that they planned to use him defensively the way Oakland had begun to — without a single, mark-it-down defensive role.
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For some young players, it might have been a message — especially coming from a new employer — that came across as a lack of belief, an underestimation. But rather than seeing his versatility, in a strange way, as somewhat of a curse, what White heard was an opportunity.
“It meant to me that they like my bat and are trying to keep me in the lineup. That’s the way I look at it,” White says. “I know with my athleticism, I can translate that to different positions. I was happy about it.”
Hours after heaping praise on White, Woodward once again inserted him into Thursday’s lineup, for what would be his fourth start and sixth appearance in the Rangers’ first six games. He was back at shortstop (after three games there and another two in left field), and this time, White would hit at the top of the Texas order. He picked up his first base hit of the spring — a two-out, opposite-field, run-scoring single — after which, in his first opportunity as a Texas baserunner, he stole second base with Angels reliever Sean Isaac on the mound and Jonathan Lucroy behind the plate.
No major-league team wants to head into a season without legitimate defenders at shortstop, center field and catcher on its bench. As the game has trended the last few years toward 12- and even 13-man pitching staffs — leaving a manager with as few as three position players in reserve — the premium on versatility among backups has never been greater. Texas has a luxury in Isiah Kiner-Falefa, as a second catcher who is more than that. And though it remains to be seen if Woodward will be willing to skirt convention and put both Kiner-Falefa and starting catcher Jeff Mathis in the lineup at a given moment, the days of having a backup shortstop who doesn’t take ground balls all over the infield or a center fielder on the bench who doesn’t work on reads on the outfield corners are long gone.
Woodward, like White, was nothing but a shortstop coming up in the minor leagues. But once he got to the big leagues, he ended up playing every position on the infield and all three outfield spots as well. He knows that asking White, or any player, to move out of his comfort zone and make himself valuable at other positions is more than just a physical test.
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“It [calls on] the player’s mental capacity and ability to challenge himself on every pitch to think through scenarios and situations,” Woodward says. “Most players are uncomfortable doing it because it takes a ton of mental focus — asking questions, learning [opponents’] swings, knowing what to look for and focus on — and then of course each position has its own unique difficulties or challenges when it comes to footwork, distance and direction of throws, angles and spin of ground balls. Typically the players that don’t want to be exposed or embarrassed will commit themselves to knowing the finer details of every position.”
For Michael Young, who played all over the infield as a pro and saw time in center and right field in high school and college, great defensive players tend to give something up when they move to other positions. He uses Manny Machado as an example, a player he calls “a good shortstop, [with] good hands, a strong arm . . . confident, instinctive . . . all the things you look for in a middle infielder. But at third, he’s a savant.”
Young played more than 3,800 innings each at second base, shortstop, and third base as a big leaguer, plus nearly 1,000 innings at first base. He won a Gold Glove as a shortstop, but believes second base was his wheelhouse. “For me, everything at second base was all instinct. I just got it. Hit it between first and second and you’re out. I’ll just figure it out. At shortstop, I needed to rehearse things in my head for positioning. At third, I felt I had to do that and learn from every hop and angle on the fly. It’s hard, man.”
Having played alongside versatile infielders like Mark DeRosa, Frank Catalanotto, and — by time he reached Texas — Omar Vizquel, Young has utmost respect for the demands of the role. “Being a guy that has to play every infield position automatically makes you a good defender. Not many people can do it. . . . Angles, internal clock, footwork, arm strength, and instinct are of massive and equal importance.” Even for an elite gloveman like Machado, Young says, shifting just 40 feet to the left changes things — and moving from second base to the left side of the infield is even more difficult. “I believe that good infielders usually have one natural position, then they plug away at the other ones.”
White isn’t certain where the Rangers prefer him defensively, but he wants the challenge. “I know they want me to continue to work in the infield as well as the outfield, but I don’t think they have their mind completely made up where they want me,” says White, who was on his honeymoon in Cancun when he found out about the trade. “I think they’re just putting me at different positions and to see how I handle it. . . . There are definitely different [techniques] at each position, and preparing and visualizing is big for me: how the ball’s going to come off the bat at each position, how your first step needs to be. But learning to do all of that has helped me feel more comfortable when I’m jumping around.”
It wasn’t until Saturday, in the Rangers’ eighth spring game and White’s seventh, that he made an appearance at second base, the position at which he won Texas League honors just six months earlier. Texas is without a frontrunner for the infield role on the Opening Day bench, but White is not a candidate. He’s ticketed for AAA Nashville, where he will play a lot of shortstop and a lot of center field, another position that the club is thin at in terms of current reinforcements. There are waves coming at both spots (shortstops Anderson Tejeda, Chris Seise, Osleivis Basabe and Frainyer Chavez; center fielders J.P. Martinez, Leody Taveras, Bubba Thompson and Pedro Gonzalez). But none is as close to helping as White might be.
In the meantime, Texas has talked about using third baseman Asdrubal Cabrera as Elvis Andrus’s safety net at shortstop and left fielder Joey Gallo as Delino DeShields’s backup in center field. There may be no pure backup at either position on the bench, though Nolan Fontana, Danny Santana, Yonny Hernandez, Andy Ibanez, and Tuesday pickup Logan Forsythe are getting looks at shortstop (it’s the primary position for none of them), and Ben Revere, Carlos Tocci, and Santana are competing as center field depth. (Texas also acquired 26-year-old center fielder Zack Granite from the Twins on Sunday, but the plus defender has an option remaining and will most likely be in Nashville in April.)
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Having a capable shortstop on the bench isn’t just ideal; it’s necessary. If he can also play a competent center field, among other positions, and give the team a tough out at the plate and the ability to do damage on the basepaths, all the better.
White won’t be that player when the Cubs and Rangers are introduced on the Opening Day chalk in Globe Life Park on March 28. But by the time Texas opens Globe Life Field a year later, the role could belong to him. In the meantime, how the Rangers and Sounds manager Jason Wood use him in the early going this season will bear watching.
Woodward concedes that one reason he’s playing White so much at shortstop in Arizona is to see how he handles the position after a year largely spent elsewhere on the field. “Shortstop is not a position where you can play it once a week and expect to be really good at it,” Woodward said after White’s first three exhibition starts, two at shortstop and one in left field. “You’re just going to steadily decline. It’s such a demanding position.” The struggle Woodward battles — perhaps given his own experience as a player — is whether putting the club’s needs first could potentially compromise White’s own development. “I go back and forth because of what our needs are . . . . I want to see if he can handle the position. I want to see it myself; I want to see how he handles the day-to-day if he goes back-to-back days, or if he comes in to back up. He’s getting a lot of his reps at shortstop because it’s a position where we don’t have a lot of depth. So I want to see what he’s got.”
Woodward comes from a Dodgers club that had perhaps the game’s most versatile roster. Chris Taylor played four positions, two in the middle infield. Forsythe and Max Muncy each played everywhere in the infield other than shortstop, and Muncy saw time in left field as well. Kike Hernandez did everything but catch, while Austin Barnes caught and played second base. But there can be a potential cost, and White’s situation is among the first test cases Woodward is faced with. “It’s great to have a guy who can play shortstop and center field. If you’ve got a guy who can do that, it solves a lot of roster problems,” Woodward adds. “But can a guy like Eli ever become a frontline shortstop with a lack of consistency at the position? I don’t know.”
There are examples of players who arrived as role players but eventually broke the typecast, staking claim to everyday work with their versatility. Marwin Gonzalez. Whit Merrifield. Yangervis Solarte. DeRosa. Taylor, who like White was a college shortstop whose role was reimagined based on his athleticism and bat. Ben Zobrist, whom White looks to for inspiration.
And Profar, the player White was traded for.
In the early going in Surprise, White has yet to hit much. But there’s an unmistakable buzz around the player club officials describe as a “freak athlete” with baseball skills. Lefthander Brock Burke, who came over with relievers Kyle Bird and Yoel Espinal from Tampa Bay in the three-team Profar deal, has been advertised as the feature player in the deal for Texas. That may very well turn out to be the case. But White was far from a throw-in. Woodward calls the infielder-outfielder a “big part of our future,” adding that he believes White could help the Rangers in 2019, even if not right when camp breaks.
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And even if he’s asked to contribute defensively outside of the middle infield. Asked to plug away at the positions that aren’t as natural for him, not so instinctive. Modern population spikes in the bullpen have changed the game, and not just on the pitching side.
White got the start in center field in Sunday’s split-squad game against the Dodgers, going 0 for 2 at the plate with a walk and a caught-stealing. He’s now hitting .056 in camp, with one hit and one walk in 19 trips. He’s made three starts at shortstop, and one start each at second base, in center field, and in left field, plus late-game appearances at shortstop and in left. There have been 34 position players to appear in games for Texas; none has played more than White. When camp breaks late this month, he’ll almost surely be headed to Tennessee, but it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s in big-league camp as long as anyone else not on the 40-man roster, continuing to get near-daily looks all over the field until it’s time for Woodward to entrust his development to others.
But that’s not to suggest Texas sees White as a long-term bench weapon. Playing a newspaper reporter on Alias didn’t consign Bradley Cooper to life as a character actor. Dave Grohl turned out to be more than just that drummer guy from Nirvana. Zobrist redefined what it means to be a utility player.
Whether that’s the type of career White carves out with his “freakish athleticism” is unanswerable now. He’s a player who has yet to play above AA, and who in spite of what might appear to be a roster opportunity hasn’t set the Cactus League on fire, at least with the bat.
White has unquestionably fired up his new employers, though, giving the organization a type of player whom they’ve been thin on for years and who creates a new challenge for the club’s decision-makers: How to distribute his work on the field to best address the needs of the team, while also getting the most out of his developing career.
EXIT VELO
- Texas acquired Granite on Sunday, six days after Minnesota had designated the 26-year-old for assignment in tandem with their signing of Marwin Gonzalez. The Twins’ minor league player of the year in 2017, Granite reached the big leagues that summer and hit .237 in 107 plate appearances. He missed half of 2018 with an injury to his non-throwing shoulder. The Rangers sent 20-year-old righthander Xavier Moore (Round 16/2017, 4.54 ERA in two pro seasons) and an undisclosed amount of cash to Minnesota for Granite, and to make room on the 40-man roster placed outfielder Scott Heineman on the 60-day injured list. Heineman continues to rehab from off-season surgery on his non-throwing shoulder.
- Righthander Connor Sadzeck, who is out of options and thus must make the Opening Day roster and remain in the big leagues indefinitely (unless injured) to avoid being exposed to league-wide waivers, has been perfect in two appearances, fanning four hitters in two frames.
- After striking out three of the four Indians he faced in his Rangers debut on Monday, needing just nine pitches to record the three strikeouts, Burke was tremendous on Sunday, retiring the Padres in order in each of his two innings. The big lefthander registered three more strikeouts and yielded no solid contact.
- Lefthander Brett Martin, who had a disastrous 2018 season (2-10, 7.28 for AA Frisco, opponents’ slash line of .357/.397/.509), has opened eyes early in camp. The 23-year-old has issued two walks in 3.1 hitless innings but has struck out four.
- The Athletic’s Eno Sarris includes Rougned Odor in a piece featuring four hitters who could be poised for breakout seasons in 2019.(Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images)