Texas Rangers minor league report: The Winston Santos breakout has begun

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The Winston Santos breakout has begun: The next contender who’ll attempt to break the Rangers’ generational pitching-development curse is a 22-year-old right-hander who’s thrown like one of the best arms in all of the minor leagues this season.

Winston Santos — a $10,000 international signing out of the Dominican Republic in 2019 — has turned heads in his first three starts of the season for High-A Hickory.

Santos pitched five innings of one-run ball in his season debut against the Rome Emperors on April 5, then generated 16 swings-and-misses in a season-high 5 2/3 innings pitched vs. the New Jersey Blue Claws on April 12. He struck out 7 batters, allowed 3 hits and walked none.

His encore and most recent start? Five scoreless, one-hit innings against the Greensboro Grasshoppers on Friday. Santos racked up a season-best 12 strikeouts (six looking, six swinging) on 14 whiffs and an 89-59 pitch-to-strike ratio. He sat 95-96 mph (with a high of 97 mph) according to Baseball America’s Josh Norris, and struck out MLB Pipeline’s No. 40 prospect Termarr Johnson on three pitches in the top of the first inning. He was named the South Atlantic League pitcher of the week for his efforts.

His 0.57 ERA and 24 strikeouts both rank third among qualified South Atlantic League pitchers. Those ranked above him in ERA are Washington’s Rodney Theophile (a 24-year-old) and Philadelphia’s Jean Cabrera (also 22 years old). Only Atlanta’s Owen Murphy (a first-round pick in the 2022 MLB draft) and Tampa Bay’s Trevor Martin (a 23-year-old who pitched at Oklahoma State) have more strikeouts.

Santos, who turned 22 on April 15, did not crack MLB Pipeline’s or Baseball America’s top 30 list of Rangers’ prospects but came in at No. 29 on The News’ preseason rundown. The headline for that March 2 story read: Potential breakout starter RHP Winston Santos. His improved strikeout percentage (40%) and career-high 6.00 strikeout-to-walk ratio suggests that his breakout has begun.

The News ranked Santos as the organization’s 14th-best pitching prospect. MLB Pipeline included 14 arms over him in their system-wide roll call. Baseball America’s top 30 included 15 non-Santos pitchers. Expect that to change some by the next time those rankings are updated.

Pitcher of the week: RHP Dane Acker. OK, so, this is kind of a cop-out considering Santos was literally named a leaguewide pitcher of the week. But, Acker’s performance at Double-A Frisco is deserving of attention.

Acker, 25, has a 0.58 ERA in three starts (13 1/3 innings pitched) for the RoughRiders. He pitched 4 2/3 no-hit innings against Arkansas on Friday with 7 strikeouts to 2 walks. He’s allowed just one run this season and has more strikeouts (18) than combined hits and walks (10).

A former fourth-round draft pick out of Oklahoma whom the Rangers acquired from the Oakland Athletics in the Jonah Heim trade, Acker has a career 3.20 ERA in 112 2/3 injury-shortened minor league innings. He looks effective now, and may pitch his way into major league consideration at some point should his strong play continue.

Player of the week: SS Sebastian Walcott.

The raw numbers still haven’t been entirely pretty for the Rangers’ No. 3 prospect in High-A, but a 5-for-20 week with with a pair of doubles, a pair of two-hit games and a three-walk game signals that the 18-year-old has started to settle in at a classification advanced beyond his age. He had a 13-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his first eight games this season; in his last five, it’s improved to 5-to-4.

Baby steps, sure, but it’s the type of thing worth watching now that Walcott is the organization’s top hitting prospect in the minor leagues.

Non top-30 standout: A three-way tie between three veteran Triple-A outfielders: Sandro Fabian, Derek Hill and Elier Hernandez. Are any considered prospects? No. Do any factor into the Rangers’ long term plans? Also, no.

But the three have combined to hit 60 for 184 (.320) in the early stages of the season at Round Rock led by Fabian, a 26-year-old, who’s slashed .383/.422/.567. So, why does it matter? It doesn’t hurt to have some level of depth, and in the case of Hill and Hernandez, a level of depth with MLB experience. Remember that one week last August when outfielder J.P. Martinez was called up and sparked the Rangers for a few games in the midst of the season’s dog days?

Stat of the week: RHP Emiliano Teodo’s command. The 23-year-old right-hander has some of the most tantalizing stuff in the entire system with a fastball that can reach triple digits. His control of that heat has been the issue.

He walked 12.7% of all batters faced in his first three seasons as a professional, but in his most recent start for Frisco, Teodo walked just one batter in five one-run innings. The Rangers are still developing Teodo as a starter, a path that will be defined long-term by whether or not he can refine his secondary pitches.

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