The Rangers announced today that top prospect Willie Calhoun is headed up to the active MLB roster. He’ll take the spot of outfielder Nomar Mazara, who’ll hit the DL with a thumb sprain.
Calhoun, who came to the Texas organization in last summer’s Yu Darvish swap, earned a brief taste of the big leagues late last year. While he was widely considered ready to hit at the game’s highest level, though, the Rangers kept him down to begin the present campaign — due in no small part to a need to refine his glovework.
While he had played quite a bit of second base in the past, Calhoun has focused on left field this year at Triple-A. The results will be on display when he suits up at the MLB level, though it’s not yet clear whether he’ll receive an extended opportunity this time around. It’ll certainly also be interesting to see Calhoun try to improve upon a tepid first effort (in a very small sample) against major-league pitching. Through 408 plate appearances this year for Round Rock, he carries a .306/.360/.444 slash with eight home runs and 27 walks to go with forty strikeouts — not nearly the output he managed in 2017, but still promising.
Calhoun’s play will obviously help dictate how much of a run he gets down the stretch. But the Rangers’ trade deadline outcomes and the health of Mazara will surely also be considered. There’s no reason at present to believe that Mazara will miss significant time, though the injury may well foreclose any possibility (however meager) that he could be traded in the next ten days.
