Leandro Lopez, Tex (A+) 4/22/25 (Complete Outing — Condensed)

There has been lit­tle of Lopez to take in the past few sea­sons, in part because his 2024 end­ed in May due to injury and also because the Rangers’ low­er affil­i­ates just start­ed broad­cast­ing. Lopez did log 19 IP this last AFL sea­son, but I was­n’t pay­ing atten­tion to him. This out­ing may have been the first time I’ve reviewed him. Lopez has pro­duced plen­ty of strike­outs in his pro career, but he’s also car­ried the dread­ed 14+BB%:

Lopez’ pre­vi­ous two out­ings this sea­son saw him walk six, strike­out six, over six with strike%‘s in the 50s. I can’t say I know what that 22-year-old Domini­can looks like, but the one I saw here impressed. Lopez went five shutout innings, allow­ing three see­ing-eye ground­ball sin­gles, walk­ing no one, strik­ing out 8, and throw­ing 71% of his 65 pitch­es for strikes. Even more impres­sive with the strike-throw­ing, Lopez filled up the zone with all five of his offer­ings: 4FB/SI/CRV/SLD/CHG. Fur­ther­more, you’ll see Lopez earn a third strike with every offer­ing. I can’t recall the last time I saw an arm do that. This isn’t a good angle to see his stuff work, but pair­ing it with the game­day plots (even if they might not be the most accu­rate) gives a decent look at how Lopez was work­ing his arse­nal. Lopez flashed nice three-speed sequenc­ing. He even gave us a right-on-right change­up for a swing­ing K. There were a cou­ple of close calls with long fly­outs, but for the most part, this Greenville line­up could­n’t do much. I not­ed the put­away pitch­es and some slick speed changes:

Some pitch data and a bet­ter angle of Lopez would be nice, but from this glimpse, col­or me intrigued. This seemed like an odd “blip on the radar” out­ing, if that’s what it is. Typ­i­cal­ly these kinds of rook­ie ball strike­out and walk per­cent­ages don’t come from a guy throw­ing such a kitchen sink with as sophis­ti­cat­ed attacks. Has Lopez always been pitch­ing like this? It would maybe check out…a young guy try­ing high­er lev­el of dif­fi­cul­ty attacks could pro­duce bal­looned walk rates. High walk rate guys don’t typ­i­cal­ly come across with such con­fi­dence in all their offer­ings like this. Regard­less, I’ll be keep­ing on eye on what this young Ranger arm is up to this sea­son. As The Rook and I gushed about on the pod­cast (episode 43,) we loved the depth of this pitch­ing sys­tem. Devel­op­men­tal innings are at a pre­mi­um in the mid-minors of this sys­tem, and if this look is what the Rangers were hop­ing they had here, I get why he’s get­ting them. Noth­ing to be run­ning out to the waiv­er wires over, but if he starts stack­ing these out­ings, folks will be because the num­bers will get gaudy!

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