Texas Rangers “Eye on the Enemy”: 3 Astros players to look out for

It’s been a pretty brutal couple of days for the Texas Rangers as of late, and things aren’t going to be getting much easier moving forward. Coming off a series loss to the Yankees where the team was no-hit and shutout in back to back games, the Rangers now get to have a rematch with the surging Houston Astros.

Houston completed the four-game sweep over Texas this past weekend, and are riding hot following a series win against the Oakland Athletics.

Previewing the Texas Rangers weekend series against Houston.

I checked in with our friends over at “Climbing Tal’s Hill” (FanSided’s Astros blog) late last night, and here’s some players they mentioned as worth keeping an eye on:

Tyler Ivey set to make his MLB debut.

Promoted earlier this week on Wednesday, Tyler Ivey is set to make his Major League debut during game one of this weekend’s series. Considered one of Houston’s top pitching prospects at the moment, Ivey is a 6-4 right-hander who has had solid success in the minors over the past couple of years.

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?

Ivey recorded a 1.38 ERA across 52.0 innings in 2019, and a 2.97 ERA across 112.0 innings in 2018. He’s a little bit on the older side (25), but he was only drafted in 2017, so his experience pitching in the Astros organization is still on the respectable side of things.

The interesting part about Ivey is that he actually grew up a Texas Rangers fan, so he’ll be pitching against his hometown team tonight with a good number of family and friends in attendance. The Rangers have been sputtering as of late offensively, but they’re trotting out their Ace in Kyle Gibson tonight to match Ivey.

Hopefully it’s not the best of homecomings for Ivey, for the Rangers’ sake.