The 2025 draft is in the books.
The Rangers believe they might have been ahead of the industry more than once with this year’s 20-round class. Time will tell the bigger story.
We can all agree that the Texas Rangers don’t win the 2023 World Series without ownership, and Jon Daniels and Chris Young and their groups, making Texas the most attractive option for Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and Nathan Eovaldi (and, yes, even Jacob deGrom — who signed on three weeks before Eovaldi and then started six games early that season, all Texas wins) — and without those four committing.
And probably not without Bruce Bochy and his staff, either.
And not without Kip Fagg and his troops. Their fingerprints were all over the championship:
Evan Carter, a 2020 second-round pick that stumped the live coverage
Jordan Montgomery (and Chris Stratton), picked up for 2020 third- and fifth-rounders Tekoah Roby and Thomas Saggese and 2017 10th-rounder John King
Josh Jung, the 2019 first-rounder whose reddest scouting report flag was whether he’d ever develop pull power at the pro level
Aroldis Chapman, added early that July for 2016 supplemental-first-round pick Cole Ragans
Mitch Garver, the primary cost for whom was 2013 fourth-rounder Isiah Kiner-Falefa
Cody Bradford, the 2019 sixth-rounder the Rangers signed three months after season-ending surgery for the Baylor junior
Ezequiel Duran, who was huge (.306/.342/.537 [.879 OPS]) at shortstop over the five weeks in April and May that Seager was out, picked up with Josh Smith and two others for 2012 supplemental first-rounder Joey Gallo — whom Fagg had teed up to sign in that draft at nearly $1 million above slot (to keep him from LSU) by signing eight other picks under slot among the club’s 13 selections in Rounds 1-10
Can we make an appointment to link back to this article three to five years from now, lauding the Rangers’ 2025 draft class as instrumental in another World Series title (or two)?
What if I’d posed the same hypothetical after the 2019 and 2020 drafts?
You good — back then?
About that 2020 class, which I wrote about a few days ago.
Back when it happened, with COVID shuttering most of the season, including all of it before the draft, The Athletic was only letting me write twice a month, and not really on the topics I wanted to dive into. Two weeks after that year’s draft, I was allowed to do a post-draft story — but because of the timing (their choice, not mine), they didn’t want a stale recap. They wanted some sort of feature.
I came up with one that turned out to be one of my favorite stories of the 301 that I got the chance to publish over there. First-round pick Justin Foscue was literally not mentioned in the story. Instead, the focus was on the Rangers’ other four picks in that truncated draft, all high schoolers — I talked to the college coaches who lost out on Carter (Duke University), Roby (Troy University), Saggese (Pepperdine University), and fourth-rounder Dylan MacLean (University of Washington) when each decided to take offers from Fagg and his group to forgo campus and turn pro with the Rangers.
To get that done, Foscue and Carter had to sign under slot, and they did: Foscue for nearly $800,000 less than his $4,036,800 slot and Carter for a little more than $200,000 under his $1,469,900 number.
Not that the process was easy, but arranging that five-piece puzzle was nothing like the 20-round versions that have played out since. Bonus pools are assigned for a team’s first 10 rounds, and anything paid to a player in Rounds 11-20 in excess of $150,000 has to come out of that 10-round bonus allotment.
Much of the math is necessarily done ahead of the draft, even though it’s certainly not known whether the players the frontline math depends on will even be on the board as each pick comes around.
For the Rangers in 2025, the bonus pool adds up to $10,991,300. So here’s how this works:
The Rangers basically have $10,991,300 to sign their first 10 draft picks. That total is arrived at by adding up the slot value for each individual pick — the 315 picks in Rounds 1-10 this year literally each have a different value (except, oddly, picks 311-315).
However, the CBA provides that a team is allowed exceed its bonus pool with the following conditions:
Outspend it by up to 5 percent, and you pay a 75 percent tax on the overage.
Outspend it by more than 5 percent and up to 10 percent, and you pay the same 75 percent tax on the overage and lose your next first-round pick.
Outspend it by more than 10 percent and up to 15 percent, and you pay a 100 percent tax on the overage and lose both your next first- and next second-round pick.
Outspend it by more than 15 percent, and you pay the same 100 percent tax on the overage and lose your next two first-rounders.
Since bonus pools were first instituted in 2012, no team has ever gone over the 5 percent threshold and forfeited future draft picks.
I did the math for you.
Rangers’ bonus pool = $10,991,300
5 percent = $549,565
So total expenditure if Rangers go 5 percent over = $11,540,865
75 percent tax if spending that extra 5 percent = $412,173.75
And thus, spending the entire bonus pool plus a full 5 percent over it, with the tax added in = $11,953,038.75
So ultimately, the number you can safely assume the Rangers will not spend a nickel over in coming to terms with their 20 draft picks is $11,540,865 (and they’d functionally be out of pocket $11,953,038.75)..
Oh, another thing: By not signing a player in the first 10 rounds, you do not get to spend that money elsewhere. In other words, let’s say for whatever reason, Texas fails to come to an agreement by the July 28 deadline with sixth-rounder Jack Wheeler, the Morris High School product out of the Chicago area who committed to the University of Illinois all the way back to his freshman year at Morris. His sixth-round slot is valued at $374,100. So if the Rangers don’t sign Wheeler, they can’t use that money to help sign other players — instead, the $10,991,300 bonus pool gets reduced by $374,100 to $10,617,200.
Not likely. In last year’s draft, only four of the 315 players taken in the first 10 rounds did not sign: a Brewers second-round pick, a Rays second-rounder, an Angels third-rounder, and a Mets ninth-rounder.
Since the 2012 implementation of bonus pools, the Rangers have failed to sign only one pick in the first 10 rounds: 2019 seventh-rounder Brandon Sproat — who instead went to the University of Florida, from which the Mets took him in the third round in 2022 and he again did not sign . . . after which the Mets took him once again, this time in the second round in 2023, and paid him just under $1.5 million to sign.
So as you read my breakdown of the Rangers’ 2025 draft crop below, Round 1 through Round 20, you know how this works. Because I feel I owe you, having taken a few extra days to pull all this together, I’m going to give you the following info at the top on each player:
The normal stuff: where in the round he was taken, position, school
What his draft slot is valued at (have fun and add up the first 10 — bet you get $10,991,300!)
The name of the Rangers area scout responsible for recommending him
My opinion of the best pick the Rangers franchise has ever made in that round, in what is now 54 drafts
And then we’ll get into my hit on each of the 20 players. Thoughts and background on the player, some fun facts, here and there a comment or two on something else interesting that went down in that round.
Let’s get going.