Josh Jung’s injury doesn’t affect Texas Rangers’ third base situation for now

Texas Rangers‘ top organizational prospect Josh Jung will miss six to eight weeks with a stress fracture in his left foot, according to President of Baseball Operations Jon Daniels.

Jung, 23, will require surgery to repair this fracture, which explains the elongated timeline for his recovery.

The Texas Tech product was not expected to make the Rangers’ opening day roster out of spring training, despite receiving an invite to Surprise this year ahead of a season in which Jung expects to make his big league debut.

You don’t love to see this news, but there are some silver linings to the situation.

For example, Jung is only slated to miss about two weeks of the minor league regular season.

Josh Jung’s injury sucks, but it won’t affect the Texas Rangers’ big league roster for now.

The injury also shouldn’t prevent the 23-year-old from progressing in his journey to reach the big leagues in 2021.

Many within the organization (as well as Jung himself) believe that 2021 is finally the year that the top prospect will breakthrough to Arlington, and it doesn’t appear as though this stress fracture will have much input on the matter, at least for now.

The other piece of “good” news to emerge from this injury update is that it won’t directly affect the Texas Rangers’ plans at third base to begin the season, since Jung wasn’t expected to begin the season on the big league roster.

More from Nolan Writin'

• Framework for a potential Max Fried trade to the Texas Rangers
• Early 2023 MLB mock draft has Texas Rangers selecting an Ohtani-lite
• 3 Texas Rangers outfield trade targets not named Bryan Reynolds
• Did Jacob deGrom really mean what he said at his Texas Rangers press conference?
• Where do Texas Rangers prospects Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker stand after the DeGrom signing?

Right now, names like Rougned Odor, Charlie Culberson, Brock Holt and Andy Ibanez are openly competing for looks at third base in spring training, hoping to turn those auditions into a starting role come April 1.

Currently, Rougned Odor and Charlie Culberson seem to be the front-runners for the job given their strong showings in camp, and the two of them could platoon at the hot corner until Jung is ready to make his debut sometime this summer.

The Texas Rangers were always going to have to “makeshift” their solution to the third base vacancy regardless of Jung’s injury, since the latter wasn’t going to be ready to step in anyway.

Hearing this news is far from ideal, but at least it doesn’t impact the team in the way that Jonathan Hernandez’ injury will.

Hernandez, an integral piece in the big league bullpen, will miss some time with a UCL strain. That means the Texas Rangers will have to find his replacement immediately.

We wish nothing but a speedy recovery to Josh Jung and hope to see him in the big leagues sometime this year!