Nick Gardewine en route to Anaheim, just in case

The Texas Rangers lost Joey Gallo and Matt Bush during yesterday’s 3-2 loss to the Chicago White Sox, after Gallo and Bush collided while going after an infield popup. Ryan Rua was pulled mid-game from last night’s Round Rock Express game and has gone to Anaheim in case the Rangers need a position player to replace Gallo.

Per Evan Grant on Twitter, the Rangers have also sent Frisco relief pitcher Nick Gardewine to Anaheim. Presumably, that means that if the Rangers have to put Matt Bush on the 7 day concussion disabled list (or the 10 day regular disabled list), Gardewine will be added to the active roster.

Gardewine, who turned 24 at the end of last week, was a 7th round pick of the Rangers in the 2013 draft out of Kaskaskia College in Arcola, Illinois. The righthander is not on the 40 man roster, but was eligible for the Rule 5 draft last season, and will be Rule 5 eligible this offseason -- this would seem to suggest that the Rangers were planning on adding him to the 40 man roster at some point in the offseason, since otherwise, they’d presumably bring up someone already on the 40 man.

Gardewine was terrific in the hostile environs of High Desert in 2016, putting up a 2.47 ERA in 54.2 IP over 29 relief appearances, striking out 60, walking just 14 and giving up 5 home runs. He’s continued that success with Frisco this year, fanning 50 batters in 33.2 IP, walking 12, and allowing 2 home runs.

Hopefully neither Rua nor Gardewine will need to be added to the active roster today, but they are apparently there and will be available if a move needs to be made.

UPDATE -- I’m just going to cut-and-paste Tepid’s comment from the comment section about Gardewine and his stuff:

Gardewine is gonna get a shot at some point, if it's not this week.

He’s good and has the look of a MLB middle reliever. FB is 93-96 and he has a hard, late biting SL 86-88 (borderline CT at times). He gets a ton of downhill plane on his pitches from a high release point too, and has a rock and fire motion that keeps batters from picking up the ball early. He keeps the ball down, but can work up in the zone too (which he’ll probably have to do from time to time in the bigs).

He throws strikes and competes like a dog, very similar to Ric Rod. Texas is sending a clear message to the relievers: throw strikes and you get a shot. Nick hasn’t walked many guys and he misses barrels, so even though there are several relievers in AA and AAA who throw harder than him, he’s gotten outs and hasn’t allowed many free passes, so for tonight anyway, he’s sleeping at the Ritz-Carlton.