2019 Texas Rangers farm review: Down East Wood Ducks pitchers

2019 Texas Rangers minor league review: The Down East Wood Ducks pitchers.

With the regular season and playoffs now over for the Texas Rangers’ minor league clubs, we are taking a look at the performance of each of the U.S.-based minor league teams. Today we are looking at the pitchers for the high-A Down East Wood Ducks, who went a Carolina League-best 87-52 this season before being knocked out in the Carolina League Semi-Finals.

The Down East Wood Ducks pitchers were the class of the Carolina League, allowing the lowest R/9 in the league and featuring a pair of relievers, Emmanuel Clase and Peter Fairbanks, who ended up making the major leagues this season. Demarcus Evans and Joe Barlow are also righthanded relievers who started the season at Down East, and who ended up being promoted after dominating the Carolina League. Meanwhile, Scott Engler and Cole Uvila are under-the-radar relievers who had strong campaigns and have put themselves into the prospect mix.

Among the starting pitchers, Jason Bahr and Tyler Phillips each put up sub-2 ERAs before earning promotions to Frisco. John King and Jake Latz are both older lefthanded pitchers who were in their first full seasons back from injury and were dominant. The one down note was that A.J. Alexy, seen as a potential breakout guy, struggled to throw strikes and then missed most of the year with a lat injury.