Top 72 Rangers prospects, 2025: Group 6 (61-72).
Here we go.
Player development is hard. So is evaluating developing players. And it’s fluid.
Exhibit A: Cole Ragans.
Over my years of ranking Rangers prospects, this is where I placed the 2016 first-round pick in my assessment of the organization’s 72 best:
2017: No. 11
2018: No. 3
2019: No. 13
Mid-2019: No. 20
2020: No. 46
2021: No. 63
Mid-2021: No. 18
2022: No. 30
2023: dropped from list due to big-league time (but suggested I would have had him at No. 10)
You might excuse the drop from 13 to 20 to 46 to 63, given that Ragans had Tommy John surgeries in March of 2018 and May of 2019 which kept him out of action for nearly four years, from late 2017 until May of 2021.
Injuries can derail prospects, but sometimes — and this was true in Ragans’s case as well — progress and consistency can be elusive for the healthy ones, too. At times, with finality. Of course, that part, as we know all too well, did not apply to Ragans.
All of that is to say that while I used to drop the season-opening versions of these now-semi-annual Top 72 lists late in the offseason, in the lull between the Winter Meetings frenzy and the start of camp, I’ve pivoted off of that to get my spring training visit in first. Offseason work, in the weight room and the lab and sometimes on the field, matters. Players turn corners, players get passed, players hit walls. My list looks a whole lot different today from how it looked in February, and that’s before the minor leagues have opened their seasons.
Before we get to today’s first installment of my new rankings, a quick primer on how I build the list, for those of you unfamiliar with this semi-annual effort:
The trickiest part for me has always been how to define the measure. Should the ranking process be based strictly on potential? To what extent do actual performance and production factor in? How are you really supposed to judge Marc Church against Yolfran Castillo? Dustin Harris against Jose Corniell? There’s not an easily delineated, objective metric that I’ve been able to come up with. Teams employ people whose primary role is to build intricate, proprietary models for this sort of thing, so at trade time they have ways to plug in a value on another team’s pre-arb middle reliever vis-à-vis a 19-year-old shortstop at the lower levels of its system.
Somewhat along those lines, the general basis for my own test — albeit based more on scouting principles than on any coding — that I apply in order to rank these prospects is this: Who would I least want to see in an Astros or Mariners uniform? Posed another way: The Rangers are about to close a hypothetical impact trade with Houston, and Texas has to put one more prospect in the deal. Astros GM Dana Brown tells Chris Young and Ross Fenstermaker that they can choose between two players to send Houston’s way as the final piece to the trade: Winston Santos or Alejandro Osuna. Dylan Dreiling or Kohl Drake. Paul Bonzagni or Devin Fitz-Gerald. Which player would give me more heartache to lose to a division rival? Who has the most industry value?
I’ve disqualified some players who, even though they maintain rookie status, have been counted on in more than spot duty at the major-league level, or are now taking on a major role. Why? Mainly because it allows me to get prospects onto the back of the list who wouldn’t have made it otherwise. Last summer, that meant I didn’t factor in Wyatt Langford, Evan Carter, or Jonathan Ornelas — but I did keep Owen White on the list. This time around, I’ve taken Cole Winn off the Top 72 for that same reason, namely, that after two MLB stints last year (one lasting almost six weeks) the eighth-year pro no longer feels like a prospect so much as a big-league option. I’ve also dropped Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter because they fall squarely into that Langford/Carter category from a year ago. Those two are still considered rookies by the league, but rules are rules in this space. Although virtually every other prospect-ranking resource has the two Vandy Boys on their lists, they are not mine.
As for Marc Church, I struggled a bit with that one, but ultimately decided to keep him on the list. He’s still very much a prospect to me, even though he made the Opening Day roster after one inning of MLB work in 2024. Harris, Justin Foscue, Walter Pennington, and Daniel Robert all debuted last year as well, but they too remain on my Top 72.
Finally, these rankings aren’t based any more on on personal biases than they are on statistics. That would be dumb and disingenuous. Personal observations, yes; favoritisms, no. I’ve seen nearly all of these players at spring training and Fall Instructional League, most plenty more than once, but more important to the process are the conversations I’ve drawn club officials, coaches and scouts into to help solidify (or force me to rethink) the evaluations I’d developed.
One more point about the year-to-year (and often same-year) unpredictability and fluidity of this exercise. As I drop the first 12 players today (that is, the final 12 of the Top 72), there is one who signed his original pro deal for a $1 million bonus, and four more who signed for more than $250,000. Yet two of my top five prospects in the entire system signed for $10,000 each.
The whole undertaking, the relay race that kicks off with scouts in the starting blocks, and coaching and player development taking over, with the big leagues as the tape (and I suppose the player as the baton), fascinates me, and I can’t wait to put this list together — twice each year, now that I’m on Substack and back to calling my own shots.
Let’s get rolling with this first of six installments, covering prospects 72 through 61. You’ll see three notations after each player’s name: his position in 2024, where he’s been assigned to begin the 2025 season, and how many spots he moved up or down since my mid-season list in 2024 (“N/C” means his slot hasn’t changed since that August version; “U/R” means the player was in the system then but unranked; “N/A” means he’s joined the organization since that time). I’ll give you the player’s age as well, as of April 1.
Here we go.