Texas Rangers recall Yohander Mendez from Triple-A Nashville

As the Texas Rangers youth movement continues, the club has announced that they have recalled left-handed pitcher Yohander Mendez from Triple-A.

The Texas Rangers are continuing to push young players into the big leagues as they wrap up what has been a somewhat promising 2019 season. With rosters expanded thanks to September call-ups, Texas has steadily continued to bring up younger players from the minor league system in an effort to get a look at them against big league competition. The most recent move was to call-up 24-year old left-handed pitcher, Yohander Mendez, from Triple-A Nashville.

While Mendez won’t be making his big league debut like others guys brought up over the past few weeks, he still represents another young option for the rotation next year. Mendez missed most of this season on the 60-day IL as he worked past a UCL problem that developed in the spring. While surgery wasn’t required, the timeline for Mendez was never definitive, he hasn’t been rehabbing for long making just 12 appearances at three different minor league levels.

The hope coming into the season was that Yohander Mendez could compete for a big league rotation spot but obviously the injury set him back. Since coming back from injury, he’s worked only as a reliever and it wouldn’t be shocking to see him continue in this role after being promoted. This call up is more to give Mendez some chances against big league hitting and getting him prepared for 2020 more so than hoping he has a big impact in the remainder of the year.

The Rangers have called up a number of young pitchers this year which interestingly, are all lefties. That likely means we’ll see some stiff competition among those guys for 2020 spots with Kolby Allard, Taylor Hearn, Joe Palumbo and Brock Burke all competing against Mendez for probably two starting rotation spots. At this point Mendez seems to be on the outside looking in for this group with Allard, Palumbo and Burke all impressing in their various chances this year.

Yohander might be able to carve out a long-relief, extra starter role for himself in the bullpen but will be fighting for a spot against some established veterans already in the Texas Rangers bullpen.