Texas no stranger to testing young phenoms
ARLINGTON — This is different.
Perhaps nothing better explains the stark difference between both Wyatt Langford and the Texas Rangers of 2024 and the organizational phenoms of the past than the mere presence of the baby-faced, chisel-chested rookie in the opening day starting lineup. Of the world champions.
Oh, the Rangers have been here before. With a mere 50 games of professional experience, Langford, 22, wouldn’t even qualify for a medal in the Rushed Rangers Olympics. David Clyde was a month out of high school. Pete Incaviglia never set foot in a minor league clubhouse. Oddibe Mcdowell spent a month. Perhaps more than any other franchise, the Rangers’ past is tinged with players who barely sniffed the minor leagues, if they sniffed them at all.
The Rangers often had no other choices.
Allow Tom Grieve, the man with whom any story about the Rangers’ history usually starts and often ends, to explain.
“We stunk, and we knew we stunk,” said Grieve, who was Clyde’s teammate in 1973 and the GM when both Mcdowell, in 1985, and Incaviglia, in 1986, made their debuts. “With Oddibe and (Incaviglia) we knew we had some good young players. We knew we had no chance to win without developing our own young players. These guys had off-the-chart talent and makeup. We had nothing to lose.”
These Rangers have everything to lose. Thursday, when they opened the season against the Chicago Cubs, the Rangers unfurled the first World Series flag in franchise history. And, if anything, the decision to put Langford into the starting lineup of a world champion team may have been more of a given than any of the talented players who came before him.
As unusual as it sounded in a sport steeped in development at the minor league level, the Rangers said at the outset of spring training they would certainly consider Langford for a spot on the big league roster.
How could they not? He hit .333 with a 1.097 OPS at Class A Hickory in the first month after the draft. So, they pushed him to Double-a Frisco, where he hit .405 with a 1.281 OPS for two weeks. And then another week at Triple-a, where he slaughtered pitching for a .368 batting average and 1.064 OPS. At that point, they even considered him as a potential injury replacement in the playoffs.
When spring training rolled around, they had no choice but to acknowledge they’d consider him for the opening day roster.
Only there was no consideration about it.
He was hitting .378 with the most spring training RBIS by a Ranger since Josh Hamilton when they finally gave up the charade, admitted the obvious and told him he’d made the club.
“I don’t think we hoped,” manager Bruce Bochy said after telling Langford he’d made the club last week. “We knew.”
While Atlanta’s Bob Horner, who later settled in Las Colinas, was famous for going straight from the draft to the big leagues in the middle of a season, Incaviglia, in 1986, became the first-ever drafted player to make his professional debut on opening day.
By the time Incaviglia made it to his first spring training, he was already a big story. He’d been the best hitter in college at Oklahoma State, was drafted eighth overall by Montreal, refused to sign, was traded to the Rangers that fall and was all but promised a job in the big leagues.
Incaviglia hit 30 homers as a rookie, spent 12 years in the majors, hit more than 200 homers. He had a successful career. But, he said, it’s the maturity aspect that is a separator. He believed he could play in the big leagues all that spring. He doubled off Allstar Dave Stieb in his debut and knew he could play.
And then just three weeks in, he questioned himself. Baseball, a game built on failure, will do that to you. At some point, it’s inevitable. How Langford handles that will be the real test.
“There is going to be a learning curve,” he said. “I hope he kills it. But you’ve got to go through that. You’ve got to experience it. It’s a mental grind.”
Nearly 20 years after Incaviglia, Mark Teixeira, the third overall pick in 2001, went to Rangers spring training with barely 80 games of minor league experience and forced his way onto the roster even though there really wasn’t a position for him. He spent the next 13 years in the majors, putting together a borderline Hall of Fame career.
Like Incaviglia, he said the mental grind of the schedule and the inevitable slumps that will come will ultimately be the test.
“Nothing prepares you for playing in this league,” he said. “You have to stick to your process. Use the resources around you and don’t let yourself get distracted. It’s not about how much you fail. It’s about succeeding a little more each time. What you are good at, do that more.”
It worked for Teixeira. Make that one more comp. Rangers special assistant to the GM Michael Young was Teixeira’s teammate in 2003. He was around Langford in spring training.
“Occasionally, you run into these really advanced players that carry themselves in a nearly perfect way,” Young said. “They know they belong. They know they have big goals. They know they haven’t arrived yet. But they know they can compete here. Those are the biggest similarities between them.”
It’s confidence without cockiness that assures teammates he’s going to make the team better. Young watched a social media clip of Langford being told by Bruce Bochy he’d made the team. There were no tears of joy. No giddiness. No emotion.
“There was no shock,” he said. “He nodded and said: ‘Let’s go win some games.’ To his teammates, I can’t tell you how impressive that comes across. It’s super refreshing. All of Wyatt was on display right there.”
A phenom making a huge leap will be on display in Arlington.
The Rangers have been here before. This is different.