3 Texas Rangers Prospects Most Likely to Emerge as September Call-Ups

3 Texas Rangers prospects that could be called up in September

#3 – Yerry Rodriguez (RHP)

It pains me to not put Cole Winn on this list, but he’s had such a dismal 2022 campaign and completely lost the momentum he carried into the season from last year. But I wanted to include a pitcher, and other than Winn and Alexy (who is already on the pro roster), Yerry’s…. pretty much the only other option?

Rodriguez is a perplexing case. He’s had an elbow injury, a PED suspension, and a transition from starter to reliever over the course of his minor league career. He currently serves as a late-innings setup guy for the AAA Express, and he still hasn’t quite proven that he has shut down stuff. However, Rodriguez has only allowed a home run in one of his 19 appearances since June 7, and he had a stretch across June where he went 8 innings of work without giving up an earned run. He’s been a Ranger since 2015, so at some point you’d like to see a real stride in progression. His walk rate is not good by any stretch and he has command issues that reinforce the issue. The potential is there, though, as Yerry earned Reliever of the Month honors from the club in June for allowing a .125/.222/.250 slash line from his opponents and posting a 1.54 ERA.

I hate to boil it down to something as remedial as this, but man, the Rangers bullpen has been shaky and unstable at best this year, and a call-up for Rodriguez as a “show me what you’ve got” type of deal could end up as a fruitful experiment! I don’t know that Yerry has the stuff to last long in the pros, or maybe he does and just hasn’t sunk his feet in as a reliever yet. The pitches are powerful – he can gun it close to 100 MPH. That in itself is good enough to sustain at the pros, but if he’s going to get some light work out of the pen in September, he’ll need to really hone in on locking in his location.