The expectations for Wyatt Langford’s arrival with the Texas Rangers fell somewhere between Evan Carter and the Kool-Aid Man.
The fourth pick in the 2023 MLB draft after demolishing college pitching in the SEC, Langford tore through four levels of the minors in 44 games last summer, slashing .360/.480/.677. He tallied 29 extra-base hits to a mere 34 strikeouts. In January, Baseball Prospectus declared him “simply the best hitter in the minor leagues,” only for Langford to promptly excuse himself from that discussion by making the Opening Day roster on the back of a six-homer spring training rampage.
Compared to the force with which he busted down the door, his unsteady first steps in the big leagues can feel a bit incongruous. His stat line goes .254/.326/.404, with 12 homers in 118 games that barely eclipse his total from 44 minor-league games. With a hot start to September that included a mammoth walk-off grand slam against the Yankees, Langford is clawing closer to his destiny, now sporting a 106 wRC+, the park-adjusted hitting metric for which 100 is average. But the ship has sailed on the vision of an instant impact elite bat that seemed not just reasonable but also imminent when the Rangers broke camp.
The good news is he’s almost certainly not done introducing the player he will become. He’s also not alone. After a rollicking five-year period ahead of the pandemic when it felt like a parade of youthful sluggers was taking the majors by storm on Day 1, rookie hitters have had a comparably rough time in recent seasons. Though Carter’s brief tour de force in Texas’ World Series run might have obscured this fact, Langford’s inconsistent start is something like the new normal in MLB, even for future superstars.
It has been hard to miss the shapeshifting debuts of the sport’s top hitting prospects. A string of plug-and-play MVP candidates in the late 2010s has slackened into a bundle of promising players navigating steeper learning curves in places like Arlington instead of places like Round Rock.
These days, hitters are emerging from the minor leagues more quickly but less ready. Blame a host of structural changes and industry trends that largely pivoted around the lost pandemic season and the new collective bargaining agreement negotiated shortly thereafter. Those include, but are not limited to: fewer minor-league levels, more fundamentally trusted data on the pitching side, and new incentives for how teams promote prospects. As Ken Rosenthal detailed earlier this season, the jump from the minors to the majors is wider for hitters than in quite some time.
I asked Langford about that jump last month, as he tried to find consistent footing in a game he has thoroughly dominated for most of his life.
“It’s definitely an adjustment,” Langford said. “The pitching up here is just—it’s really good. Day in and day out, you’re seeing the best stuff.”
In the years leading up to 2020, 24-and-under debut hitters ran parallel or ahead of the overall MLB OPS in their first 50 games, on average. But that trendline has dropped precipitously since. This year, those prospect-age rookies have lagged more than 50 points behind the MLB average OPS, which stands at .713, in their first 50 games.
Langford posted a .646 OPS in his first 50, which landed in the middle of his highly ranked peers. Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio managed only a .592 OPS, while San Diego Padres outfielder Jackson Merrill edged him out with a .680 OPS. Consensus No. 1 prospect Jackson Holliday, the Baltimore Orioles shortstop who took a detour back through the minors, has a .523 OPS through 53 games.
“That gap has widened,” Tampa Bay Rays hitting coach Chad Mottola told me last year, having had several of his young players require resets, “and there’s nothing you can really do as a player because you’re having success, and you think you’re doing the right things.”
Pitchers with the ingredients for major-league success are both more easily identifiable and more easily improved. Because of the game’s inherent pitch vs. reaction nature and the relative ease of implementing analytical teachings, arms just burn brighter (and also blow up more often). The stuff is nasty, and more varied. The strategies are targeted, and more fine-tuned.
“Guys just have better plans on you, I would say, than in the minor leagues,” Langford said. “In the minor leagues, guys are more so working on things, kind of pitching to their strengths. In the big leagues, guys are pitching to your weaknesses more. They know what your weaknesses are, and they’re going to attack it until you prove you can handle it.”
While Langford’s bumpy first ride through the big leagues is partially about the chasm between the minors and the majors, it’s also about the organization’s apparent recognition of the reality that the minors didn’t have much to offer for a hitter of his pedigree.
Merrill and Chourio, two peers who have achieved more obvious liftoff this season, had far more pro seasoning because they didn’t play college ball. Colton Cowser, the Orioles outfielder who most likely will claim the AL Rookie of the Year award many had envisioned for Langford, marinated for 258 minor-league games across three seasons and got the kinks out in a 26-game cup of coffee last season, in which he logged a grisly .433 OPS.
Even other proven college bats who came off the board in the top five and skyrocketed up prospect lists spent considerably more time on the farm. Kris Bryant, the poster child for service-time manipulation, plied his trade in the minors for 202 games ahead of his 2015 debut. Alex Bregman spent 157 games there before debuting in 2016, while Adley Rutschman logged 180 games before his 2022 debut.
Langford was there for 211 plate appearances.
“It’s kind of different, I guess, because I didn’t spend too much time in the minors,” he said. “I didn’t get to really see it too much.”
He’s doing his learning now. And he’s clearly making progress.
After running huge walk rates and barely ever whiffing in his college and minor-league days, Langford is evolving to find his best approach in less lopsided matchups. More of his swings in the second half have come on strikes. Fewer of his swings have been used on the bait that is an offspeed pitch. And fewer of his swings have resulted in whiffs. Soon enough, he will need to take the next step and unlock the damage that comes from squaring up more of those muscular, optimized swings. He’s still popping up too many fastballs and sending too many fly balls into the vast, out-riddled center of the field.
Yet those same traits that made him a jaw-dropping minor-league talent show up under the hood in the majors, even amid the ups and downs. His bat speed is higher than 84 percent of MLB hitters, per Statcast, and his chase rate is better than 82 percent of them. The wheels that helped him log his first homer by way of the inside-the-park route are an extreme plus, and could help him improve his lackluster defensive ratings.
It’s not a stray hope that all these things come together—it is a pattern. From elite players like Bobby Witt Jr. to burgeoning stars a tier down such as Zach Neto and Riley Greene, sub-average batting lines in Year 1 have become stepping stones more than cause for alarm.
The anticipation wasn’t for naught. Langford just has to complete the final mile in front of everyone.
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