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SURPRISE, Arizona — During the first week of spring training, Texas Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux returned to the team’s clubhouse after watching a live batting practice session and declared: “I just saw the best player on the field.” The room of coaches and assorted personnel perked up. The Rangers came into camp off a World Series title but with questionable starting pitching depth, and they were hopeful Maddux, a coach for 20 seasons, had unearthed his latest gem on the mound.

Wyatt Langford,” Maddux said.

Langford is not a pitcher. He is a 6-foot-1, 225-pound power-hitting outfielder, and for a pitching coach — particularly one of Maddux’s stature — to gravitate so quickly to Langford provided the latest evidence that the defending champions’ offense could be even better this year.

Maddux’s answer surprised no one internally. After sliding to Texas at the No. 4 pick in a loaded 2023 draft, Langford, now 22, spent two months destroying four minor league levels, hitting .360/.480/.677 with 10 home runs in 200 plate appearances. He arrived this spring “in real competition to make the club,” according to Texas general manager Chris Young, and only the Rangers’ outfield excellence stands between Langford and an every-day big league role.

“I know if I do what I can do,” Langford said, “they’ll give me the opportunity to showcase that.”

Langford’s right-handed swing has impressed the Rangers so thoroughly that he was under substantial consideration to make his major league debut during the playoffs last year. Toward the end of the regular season, with right fielder Adolis Garcia injured, the Rangers discussed promoting Langford to fill out an already-dangerous lineup. They weren’t afraid of his age or inexperience. As ably as rookie Evan Carter was already garnering headlines with his impressive play, adding Langford to Carter and center fielder Leody Taveras would’ve provided a needed offensive boost.

Garcia returned, of course, going on a legendary hot streak that netted him American League Championship Series MVP honors. But Langford remained around the team during the postseason, joining the Rangers’ so-called “stay-ready squad” in case of injuries. Quickly, he distinguished himself.

The group would gather at Globe Life Field in the morning and take live at-bats. Among those on the mound were Jack Leiter, Owen White and Cole Winn, the best pitching prospects in the Rangers’ organization. Danny Duffy, a World Series champion for the 2015 Kansas City Royals with Young as his teammate, was there and already had a deep respect for Langford after playing with him in Double-A during Duffy’s attempt at a return to the big leagues.

“I got him out once, and it was the first pitch I ever threw him,” Duffy said. “It was a changeup. I didn’t want to challenge him right there. Ball was flying. I hadn’t given up a homer all year, and he wasn’t about to be my first, but he just missed one. Hit it like 400 feet in the air to the middle of center field. If he would’ve clipped it, it would’ve gone to the Embassy Suites.”

Future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer, then trying to return from an injury, didn’t know who Langford was before he faced him during a live batting practice in October. Scherzer learned quickly when Langford hammered a double off the wall. As the month went on and the Rangers cruised to the AL pennant, Langford continued to flabbergast onlookers, consistently barreling balls at 110 mph-plus, territory typically reserved for elite major league hitters. While the stay-ready crew was sent home after Game 1 of the World Series, Garcia’s oblique injury suffered in Game 3 reignited the chatter among Rangers personnel to summon Langford.

“He was right there in the conversation,” Texas bench coach Donnie Ecker said. “And if he did play, he was going right in the 3-hole.”

“I don’t know if he would’ve hit third, to be honest,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said, “but watching him in the live BPs was impressive. The numbers, what he was doing, was incredible. You can’t ignore that. And then you get to know the man and he’s got no fear. And you saw what Carter did. And so, we had that to go on too that, hey, these guys are different, these young kids. And so, we didn’t think he’d be afraid. That’s why it was legit, why he was with us.

“Looking back, I mean, it actually would’ve been pretty cool to see.”

Ultimately, Texas chose to give veteran Travis Jankowski the left-field slot and elevate utility man Ezequiel Duran to the active roster. Both had been there all year. They were capable, game-tested. With a 2-1 lead in the Series and home-field advantage, the Rangers didn’t feel the need to push the envelope. The prospect of Langford in the lineup, though, remained in their thoughts. During the celebration after the Rangers’ championship-clinching Game 5, one coach, already looking forward to 2024, said: “And we’re going to have Langford next year, too.”

“It wasn’t just the performance or the results in the minor leagues,” Young said. “It was the process metrics, which we value, that suggested he could come up and have success. His exit velos were extremely high. His chase rate was extremely low. He was walking. He was showing elite discipline. It’s everything we saw when we drafted him — and he’d also performed on the biggest stage in college baseball.

“When you take that into account, the moment wasn’t going to be too big for him.”

Langford had laid waste to college baseball over the previous two years, going from a backup catcher who got four at-bats as a freshman at Florida to arguably the most productive hitter in the country. As a sophomore, Langford hit an SEC-leading 26 home runs with a 1.166 OPS. His follow-up was even better: While his home run total dropped to 21, Langford hit 19 more doubles as a junior and walked 20 more times while maintaining his strikeout rate. His season ended just one win short of a College World Series title.

As much as he would’ve enjoyed being the first position player to participate in the College World Series and the World Series in the same season, Langford saw 2023 as a grand success — one he spent the offseason trying to replicate as he trained with hopes of convincing the Rangers he would be ready this spring. Because Langford understands that dominating in college and the minors guarantees nothing at the major league level, he has used the early goings of spring training to pick the brains of veterans Marcus Semien, Nathaniel Lowe and Josh Jung — Langford’s spring roommate — to better understand the fundamentals of playing his first 162-game season.

“The biggest goal is just to learn as much as I can, make sure to just be myself and go out there and play and have fun,” Langford said. “If it happens, then awesome. If not, then I’ll go to wherever they send me to and do the best I can.

“I know if I do what I can do, they’ll give me the opportunity to showcase that.”

When he gets that chance might depend on the Rangers’ needs. With Jung and shortstop Corey Seager sidelined, they could use their 26th roster spot for a utility man to open the season. What’s clear is that the Rangers won’t keep Langford down just to keep him down — not with MLB’s rules that award a full year of service time to top rookies and incentivize teams to promote them by giving draft picks.

Especially if Rangers coaches continue to see him as the best player on the field.

“He will tell us when he’s ready,” Young said, “and if that’s now, it’s now.”

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Rangers’ Garcia scratched with forearm soreness

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Rangers' Garcia scratched with forearm soreness

ARLINGTON, Texas — Rangers slugger Adolis Garcia was scratched from the starting lineup Sunday and got an MRI on his right forearm, a day after a collision in the outfield with second baseman Marcus Semien while both All-Star players went after a popup.

Manager Bruce Bochy said the plan had been for García, their primary right fielder, to be the designated hitter in the series finale against the Los Angeles Angels.

“The right forearm area took a pretty good shot there from Marcus, so he’ll get checked out,” Bochy said before the game. “We’ll have an MRI done, see where we’re at. My guess is, I’m hoping anyway, after the day off, he’ll be good to go.”

Bochy, without elaborating, said after their 4-1 loss that the MRI looked good.

The Rangers have a day off Monday before a three-game series at Philadelphia.

Semien was running out and García was coming in on Taylor Ward‘s popup to shallow right field in the sixth inning. Semien collided into García who had pulled up and gone down to a knee to get the ball after it dropped to the ground. Semien took a hard tumble, though both players stayed in and finished the Rangers’ 3-2 win in 13 innings.

García, the American League Championship Series MVP last year, hit his 11th homer of the season in the bottom of the sixth inning to tie the game at 1-1. He is hitting .251 and his 35 RBIs ranked fourth in the American League this season.

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Ohtani delivers first walk-off hit as a Dodger

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Ohtani delivers first walk-off hit as a Dodger

LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani delivered his second major league walk-off hit, a two-out single in the 10th inning that sent the Los Angeles Dodgers to a 3-2 victory over the Cincinnati Reds on Sunday.

Andy Pages hit an early two-run homer for the Dodgers, who have won 20 of 26 after taking three of four from Cincinnati.

Pinch-hitter Will Smith drew a one-out walk in the 10th from Alexis Diaz (1-3), who got Mookie Betts to fly out before Ohtani stroked a single to right, scoring Jason Heyward. Ohtani’s latest feat set off a loud celebration for another huge weekend crowd at Dodger Stadium.

His only other walk-off hit in Major League Baseball was an 11th-inning single for the Los Angeles Angels in a 6-5 win over Houston on Sept. 4, 2020.

It was Ohtani’s 21st multi-hit game this season, the most in MLB. He is hitting .393 this month, the third-highest batting average in MLB among hitters with at least 20 at-bats in May (Kevin Pillar .447, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. .407).

Stuart Fairchild had two hits for the Reds, who have lost 15 of 18. Cincinnati also has lost seven consecutive series.

Anthony Banda (1-0) got three straight outs in the 10th in his debut with the Dodgers, who acquired the reliever from Cleveland on Friday. Banda’s win was his first since May 28, 2022, with Pittsburgh. He has pitched for the Blue Jays, Yankees, Nationals and Dodgers — and played in Cleveland’s minor league system — since leaving the Pirates less than two years ago.

Cincinnati reliever Emilio Pagan left abruptly with two outs in the ninth and a 2-1 count on Heyward. Pagan recorded two outs before throwing three straight fastballs to Heyward and then departing with a possible shoulder injury.

Diaz struck out Heyward to force extra innings.

Hunter Greene struck out eight while pitching four-hit ball into the seventh inning for Cincinnati in his second career start in his hometown. The hard-throwing right-hander got youth coaching at Compton’s Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy and played high school ball in Sherman Oaks before the Reds made him the second overall pick in 2017.

Landon Knack yielded one run on three hits over the first 4⅔ innings for the Dodgers in his fourth major league appearance. Knack made three starts in April, and he got recalled from Triple-A Oklahoma City for this spot start apparently so the Dodgers could give a full week of rest to Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Freddie Freeman singled in the fourth before Pages put a poor slider into the short porch down the left-field line for the fifth homer of his rookie season.

Cincinnati had been shut out for 16 consecutive innings at Chavez Ravine before it scored on back-to-back doubles to left in the fifth by Fairchild and Santiago Espinal, whose catchable drive fooled Teoscar Hernandez.

Cincinnati tied it in the seventh when pinch-hitter Spencer Steer — a Long Beach native in an 0-for-16 slump — drew a bases-loaded walk on nine pitches from Alex Vesia, who escaped the jam.

ESPN Stats & Information and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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‘This fan base is going to fall in love with him’: How Luis Arráez is following in Tony Gwynn’s footsteps

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'This fan base is going to fall in love with him': How Luis Arráez is following in Tony Gwynn's footsteps

Comparisons to Tony Gwynn began to follow Luis Arráez when he first established himself in the big leagues, growing more prevalent as the hits piled up and the batting titles followed. Arráez wasn’t as prolific, but his skills and the way he utilized them — consistently spraying baseballs to unoccupied spaces all over the field, barreling pitches regardless of how or where they were thrown — made links to one of history’s most gifted hitters seem inevitable.

Tony Gwynn Jr., the late Hall of Famer’s son, often heard them and largely understood them. But it wasn’t until the night of May 4, while watching Arráez compile four hits in his debut with the same San Diego Padres team his father starred for, that he actually felt them.

“I honestly had goosebumps watching him put together at-bats,” said Gwynn Jr., a retired major league outfielder who serves as an analyst for the Padres’ radio broadcasts. “It took me back to watching film with my dad as he was basically doing the same thing.”

Gwynn was universally celebrated throughout the 1980s and ’90s, but Arráez stands as a polarizing figure in the slug-obsessed, launch-angle-consumed era in which he plays. Some, like the Miami Marlins team that traded him away earlier this month, see a one-dimensional player who doesn’t provide enough speed, power or defensive acumen to build around. Others, like the Padres, who used four prospects to acquire him at a time when trades rarely happen, see the type of offensive mastery that more than makes up for it.

What’s inarguable is that Arráez is the ultimate outlier.

Case in point: The publicly available bat-speed metrics recently unveiled by Statcast feature a graph that places hitters based on their relationship between average bat speed (X-axis) and squared-up rate (Y-axis). All alone on the top left corner, far removed from the other 217 qualified hitters, is Arráez. He has the slowest swing in the sport but also its most efficient, theoretically, because he meets pitches with the sweet spot of his bat more often than anybody else.

Arráez has only 24 home runs in 2,165 career at-bats. But his .324 batting average since his 2019 debut leads the majors, 10 points higher than that of Freddie Freeman, the runner-up. He walks at a below-average clip, but his major league-leading 7.5% strikeout rate is about a third of the MLB average during that stretch, cartoonish in the most strikeout-prone era in baseball history.

He is elite even when he chases: The major league average on pitches outside the rulebook strike zone since the start of the 2023 season is .162. Arráez’s: .297.

“Now with the analytics they focus on home runs, they focus on guys hitting the ball hard but hitting .200,” Arráez said in Spanish. “But in my mind, and with all the work that I do, I stay focused on just doing my job — not try to do too much or try to do what they’re telling me to do. Analysts say my exit velocity is [among] the lowest in the big leagues. Amen. Let them keep saying that. As long as I have my health, I keep doing things to help my team, I’m going to be fine.”

Arráez became the first player to win a batting title in the American and National leagues in consecutive seasons last year. But trade rumors surrounded him from the onset of 2024, his second-to-last season before free agency. As a 27-year-old two-time All-Star with a .324 career batting average, a sterling reputation and a stated desire to remain in South Florida, he was a player the directionless Marlins franchise could build around. But a new front office considered him expendable. A 9-24 start to the season created an opening. And on May 3, five minutes before the first pitch was thrown in Oakland, Marlins manager Skip Schumaker called Arráez into his office.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Arráez said, “I wasn’t ready to be traded.”

Schumaker told Arráez he’d have to remove him from the lineup because a deal with the Padres was close. He gave him the option of returning to the clubhouse or going into the dugout for one final moment with his teammates. Arráez stayed until the fifth inning, retreated to his hotel room, waited on a call from Padres officials and hopped on a flight at noon the following day to meet his new team.

Arráez didn’t have enough clothes for the additional six days of the Padres’ road trip. He wore his Marlins-colored cleats through stops in Phoenix and Chicago and compiled eight hits in 20 at-bats during that stretch. After the team got back to San Diego, he used the May 9 off day to search for an apartment and spend time with his mom, wife and three daughters, who flew in for a weekend visit, then delivered a walk-off single against the rival Los Angeles Dodgers in his home debut the following night. He’s still living out of a hotel room crammed with unopened boxes, but he already feels wanted. Embraced, even.

“They’ve welcomed me here with open arms,” Arráez said. “I feel as if I’ve been here since spring training.”

Arráez was a 4-year-old in Venezuela when Gwynn played the final season of his 20-year career in 2001. When Gwynn died in 2014, Arráez was still a teenager on the Minnesota Twins‘ Dominican Summer League team. Hearing comparisons to Gwynn made him curious enough to find old clips of a player who was mostly foreign to him. He began to study his approach to hitting, marveling specifically at Gwynn’s ability to let pitches travel deep into the strike zone before driving them to the opposite field.

Conversations with one of Gwynn’s most important mentors, Twins icon and gifted batsman Rod Carew, brought Arráez more insight. Now similar conversations are taking place with Gwynn’s only son. When the Padres return from their seven-game road trip through Atlanta and Cincinnati, Arráez plans to visit the Gwynn statue that sits just outside of Petco Park. He isn’t necessarily leaning into the comparisons, but he isn’t running from them, either.

“It’s such a great experience when fans embrace you with open arms and tell you that I’m a mini Tony Gwynn, and that I have a lot of traits that remind them of him,” Arráez said. “It’s nice to hear people say things like that.”

Perhaps the quality Gwynn and Arráez share most is self-awareness. “Know thyself” is a line Gwynn Jr. heard his father say repeatedly growing up, one that translated directly to how he approached his profession: He knew his strengths, worked relentlessly to maximize them and never tried to emulate others. Arráez’s new teammates already see the same in him.

“It’s not like he goes up there and just does it,” Padres third baseman Manny Machado said. “He puts a lot of work in the cage, before games, even before BP and stuff like that. He knows his strength, and he works on it.”

Baseball’s evolution has made it harder than ever for someone like Arráez to exist. Pitchers have never thrown harder, data has never been more prevalent, batting averages have hardly ever been lower. But Padres manager Mike Shildt is adamant that Arráez shouldn’t be an anomaly.

He recalled an old San Diego Union-Tribune article that re-ran May 9, on what would have been Gwynn’s 64th birthday. It detailed the amount of time Gwynn spent working on hitting, and it validated something Shildt had long believed: That more players could hit .300, even today, if they worked on the craft of doing so as diligently and as pointedly as Gwynn did. As Arráez does.

“When you have an ability to hit a ball to all the different areas, you’re going to hit,” Shildt said. “And big picture, our industry hasn’t taught that anymore. It’s not valued anymore. It’s not monetized anymore. You can’t quantify this, but it’s a shame how many amateur and lower-level professional players have been excluded from continuing to play because they don’t meet a measurable. They don’t meet an exit velocity or bat speed or launch angle, or all of those things that this game is now basically recruiting and monetizing blindly. They’re just getting hits. And somehow that became out of vogue in our industry in general.”

But those are now someone else’s problems. The Padres will gladly take Arráez, all he his and all he isn’t, and slot him ahead of Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts in hopes of riding his singular bat to the playoffs.

Arráez is still six batting titles away from catching Gwynn. He isn’t anywhere near as good a defender or as lethal a baserunner as Gwynn was early in his career, and he needs another decade-plus of similar production — heightened production, actually, given the .345 batting average Gwynn boasted between his ages 27 and 37 seasons — to even approach him as a hitter. But Arráez’s style is the closest we’ve got.

And if there’s one place that can appreciate it, it’s his new one.

“This fan base is going to fall in love with him,” Gwynn Jr. said. “It’s how a lot of them grew up watching baseball.”

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