Fall Instructs, 2025: Day 2.
Devin Fitz-Gerald is not asking for your attention. But you’d better not get in his way.
The first thing you notice about Devin Fitz-Gerald is how little you notice.
He’s unassuming in height. In physicality. In his manner.
But what he does in a baseball uniform ignites something in him. When there’s a bat in his hands, whatever that thing is regularly ignites the baseball, too.
Fitz-Gerald, the 20-year-old drafted by Texas in the fifth round in 2024, was at the very top of the list of the players I’d circled in red to get as many looks at as possible while in Arizona this week. Unlike players like Gavin Fien, Josh Owens, Jack Wheeler, and Jay McQueen, who just joined the organization this summer, Fitz-Gerald has been around — but I didn’t see much of him when I was here in March and the whispers were increasing in intensity. A hamstring injury had sidelined him days before, and would keep him off the field for nearly two months.
I wrote this in April, when I slotted the infielder at No. 20 on my Top 72 list, 28 spots higher than I’d had him last summer even though he had yet to take his first professional at-bat in the interim:
He took to it well. Assigned in fact to the ACL squad for its opener, he pillaged league pitching for a month and half, hitting .318/.423/.542 (.965 OPS) with more walks (17) than strikeouts (15) in 130 plate appearances while splitting his defensive assignments almost equally between third base, second base, and shortstop. The Rangers had seen enough and put him on a plane to Hickory, North Carolina, where he held his own (.250/.442/.281 [.723 OPS] — and again piling up more walks than strikeouts) against Low-A pitchers who were, on average, a year and a half older than he was.
But on July 2, just 10 games into his Crawdads run, Fitz-Gerald — who’d played nothing but shortstop once he arrived — injured his non-throwing shoulder diving for a ball in the hole, and his season, one that had been delayed at the start, was cut short at the end.
In fact, he wouldn’t step in the box to face a pro pitcher again until yesterday. I was there for it.
But let’s back up a bit.
