A stumbling start and a strong finish to a rookie campaign
With the 2024 regular season over, it is time for us to go back and take a look at the players who appeared for the Texas Rangers this season.
Today, we look at outfielder Wyatt Langford.
I figured we should end this series on a high note.
Expectations for Wyatt Langford, coming into the 2024 season, were sky-high. The fourth overall pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, he destroyed pitchers at high-A, AA and AAA after signing in 2023, then dominated the Cactus League in the spring of 2024. Earning a spot on the Opening Day roster and an everyday spot in the lineup, Langford looked ready to break out, and was considered one of the favorites to win the American League Rookie of the Year Award.
Baseball is hard, though, even for wunderkinds. Langford struggled for the first month of the season, particularly in regards to hitting for power, before landing on the injured list with a hamstring strain suffered in a game at Kansas City on May 4. He was slashing .224/.295/.293 at that point.
It wasn’t unreasonable at that point to think that the Rangers had moved Langford too quickly, had asked too much of him, too soon. That happens sometimes — Jackson Holliday, the consensus #1 prospect in baseball heading into the 2024 season, got off to a brutal start to the season for the Orioles last year and was sent down after 10 games, not to return until the trade deadline. Having Langford spend some time in Round Rock, not just on a rehab assignment but even once he was healthy, would seemed to have made sense. Let him mash in AAA, get into a groove, and bring him back up later in the season.
The Rangers didn’t do that, at least in part, one would think, due to Evan Carter landing on the injured list, and thus reducing the team’s contingent of competent outfield options — Langford was activated from the injured list the same day that Carter landed on the injured list, and the prospect of a team with playoff aspirations that was already off to a slow start having to rely even more on Robbie Grossman and Ezequiel Duran and Derek Hill was no doubt unpalatable.
However, you also get the sense that the team believed in Langford, felt he was a major leaguer, and didn’t see much value in reps in AAA for the sake of getting reps in AAA at that point.
From the time he returned from the injured list through season’s end, Langford slashed .261/.334/.452 in 428 plate appearances, with 15 home runs, while going 18 for 20 in stolen base attempts, to boot. If Wyatt Langford had started the season in the minors, been called up in late May, and put up that line, I think there’d be a lot more warm fuzzies about his season than there actually was.
We have talked before about how Langford ended the season on a rampage, slashing .300/.386/.610 with 8 bombs in 114 plate appearances and a 7 for 7 line in stolen bases. Obviously, that helped boost both his post-season line and his overall season line (.253/.325/.415 in 557 plate appearances, good for a 111 OPS+). But even if we take out September, and look just at post-injury through August, Langford slashed .247/.315/.396, which, yes, isn’t blowing the doors off the league, but is still pretty damn respectable.
Wyatt Langford put up a 3.9 bWAR and 2.9 fWAR in 2024 — better than you’d expect from a guy who primarily was a left fielder with a 111 OPS+/110 wRC+. However, Langford graded out quite well defensively — +14 per DRS and +5 per FRV — which is even more impressive when you consider he was a catcher until his sophomore season at Florida in 2022. And yes, Langford is fast — 98th percentile in sprint speed — but that doesn’t always translate to quality (or even acceptable) outfield defense, as old heads who remember Lonnie “Skates” Smith* can tell you, as well as those who recall Nick Solak.
* Smith was one of the fastest players in baseball in the early 80s, finishing top five in the league four times, but earned the nickname “Skates” because, so the joke went, he played the outfield like he was wearing skates out there.
Going 19 for 22 in stolen base attempts helps with the ol’ WAR, as well.
The 3.9 bWAR Langford put up was the third best by a rookie position players in Rangers team history, trailing only Bump Wills (wait, Bump Wills?), who had a 5.4 bWAR in 1977, and Jim Sundberg, who had a 4.0 bWAR in 1974. The only other 3+ bWAR rookie position players for Texas are Adolis Garcia in 2021 (also 3.9), Elvis Andrus in 2009 (3.6), and Mike Hargrove in 1974 (3.3). Hargrove, in case you’re interested, was the Rookie of the Year in 1974, while Sundberg finished fourth. If fWAR is more your jam, Langford had the fifth best rookie season for a Ranger position player, tied with Garcia, and behind Wills, Elvis, Hargrove and Sundberg.
Langford was also third in bWAR among position players in the majors in 2024, behind Masyn Wynn (!!!) at 4.9, and Jackson Merrill at 4.4. Only Jackson Chourio (3.8), Wilyer Abreu (3.4) and Colton Cowser (3.1) exceeded 3.0 in 2024. If we go with fWAR, Langford was 9th among position player rookies in 2024.
So Langford had one of the best rookie seasons of any position player last year, and one of the best rookies seasons of any position player in Rangers history. Not bad for a guy whose year was generally considered to be at least mildly disappointing.
If we look at the Statcast data, well, Langford’s percentile rankings are mostly pink — above average, though not dramatically so. He was anywhere from 57th to 68th percentile in:
xwOBA
xBA
xSLG
Average exit velocity
Barrel rate
Hard hit rate
Whiff rate
K rate
Walk rate
Not bad, huh? The two areas where he was below average were in launch angle sweet spot percentage — just 19th percentile, which helps explain why Langford didn’t hit for more power — and squared up percentage, at 47th percentile.
Langford’s .321 wOBA last year was slightly below his .331 xwOBA, which is encouraging. He struggled against fastballs, putting up a .308 wOBA, but his .353 xwOBA against fastballs and 57.7% hard hit rate against them suggests that there is some sample size noise in there, versus it being an actual weakness.
Langford was very much a pull hitter last year — he pulled the ball 44.7% of the time, compared to 37.2% for the league as a whole, and he had one of the highest rates of pulling the ball in the air — 23.0%, compared to 16.6% for the league as a whole. Interestingly, Statcast suggests he had some bad luck on home runs, as well, with his expected home runs being at 18.7, compared to the 16 he actually recorded.
If we look at Langford from the time he returned from the injured list forward, he had a .339 wOBA and .338 xwOBA, with that xwOBA being around the 75th percentile mark for MLB. If we just look at September forward, Langford had a .422 wOBA, but “just” a .385 xwOBA — and a .385 xwOBA is around the 95th percentile for MLB hitters.
There’s a lot to feel good about in regards to Langford’s 2024 season. He showed he was much more capable defensively than was expected, and was a very strong baserunner, to boot. Offensively, his overall performance was good, if not what was hoped for, but if you give him a mulligan for the first month-plus when he was getting his first exposure to MLB pitching, it was very solid.
And if you think September was representative of what he is going to do going forward…well, September 2024 Wyatt Langford, over a full season, is an MVP candidate.
Previously: