Draft Preview - Texas Rangers

The thirteenth team draft preview on my blog focuses on the Texas Rangers and their scouting director Kip Fagg.

Here's an excerpt from the writeup, which features small writeups on 15 players involved with Fagg's work:

The Rangers’ front office underwent a fairly significant change this past offseason, and Kip Fagg’s promotion was just a piece of the puzzle. The changes weren’t necessarily in terms of firings, but actually in terms of strategic hiring and promotion. Ron Hopkins, who had run the Rangers’ drafts back to 2003, was promoted to the role of special assistant to general manager Jon Daniels, and he will still be a part of the greater scouting system in place in the Texas organization. As one of the best individual evaluators in the game, having Hopkins in that role is a nice advantage for an increasingly improving scouting group in Arlington. Fagg was part of Hopkins’ inner group of scouts, and he has scouting roots on the West Coast. That’s interesting, but it’s not the end-all, be-all of where Fagg will be looking in 2010. Fagg’s direct boss will be A.J. Preller, the man responsible for the Rangers’ success in Latin America over the last number of years. Another great scouting mind, Preller will also shape the strategy of the coming draft as the head of all of the Rangers’ scouting efforts. All in all, combined with more strategic hires at the crosschecker and pro scout levels, the Rangers have greatly improved their scouting department this offseason. Since Fagg will undoubtedly change some trends in his own way, looking at trends over the last three years isn’t necessarily prudent, but we’ll do so anyway. In terms of pitchers, athletic pitchers were greatly preferred, in addition to a general willingness to take smallish pitchers, as well. For hitters, raw power is a key trait, and athleticism isn’t necessarily a big factor at all. Defensive ability has been a key to all except for Clark Murphy. These are all very high-level trends, but I will stick to that instead of diving into the trends of a scouting director who no longer has that role.

Direct link here.

I'm also running a special on the 2010 MLB Draft Notebook, as the next 17 buyers will be entered in a drawing for an autographed baseball from Jameson Taillon. If you'd like to read more about the promotion, go ahead and do so here.

Also, read the State of the Blog here.

What do you think? What will the Rangers do?