Texas Rangers: 4 pitchers who would improve the bullpen

Texas Rangers Minor Leaguer Alex Speas

Alex Speas was drafted all the way back in 2016. He has dealt with health issues over the years as he had to come back from Tommy John surgery in 2018. Then he had to deal with the stresses that come from having a kid and then dealing with the pandemic and the lost season that resulted from that.

Speas did an interview about his time away with Frisco in the video embedded below. He went to coach high school baseball. Then told Texas he wanted to come back and has been healthy and pitching well for Frisco this season.

Speas is now 25 years old and is still throwing 100 mph fastballs. He is 6'3 and comes straight downhill with his fastball. When he is able to locate his pitches he is nearly impossible to hit. I hesitate to include him because I am not sure what the Rangers plan is for him and if it would include coming to Arlington. The one thing I do know is with all that he has had to overcome that he will not be overwhelmed by pitching to major-league hitters.

His fastball and slider will play at the major league level. The only question about Speas is control. It is the issue that has held him back at times in his career. This season he has nine walks in 14 1/3 innings. He still is holding a low ERA at 1.26. Hitters are only hitting .167 against Speas. In May Speas has made seven appearances with six of them being scoreless. He allowed two runs back on May 11th. He has 11 strikeouts this month to just three walks. In the eighth and ninth innings he has a 0.00 ERA with 12 strikeouts to three walks.

Speas would be a great late-innings option who can bring high velocity and can miss bats. There is not a lot of that in the bullpen currently. To think before this season he was a coach and now he is an option to make his major league debut at some point this season. Speas' story sounds like it should be a Hollywood script rather than a potential documentary.