The Texas Rangers have traded outfielder Nomar Mazara to the Chicago White Sox for outfield prospect Steele Walker per multiple sources. This news broke shortly after the Gerrit Cole signing, so it will likely go unsung by most of the baseball world outside of the two involved fan bases.
Mazara debuted for the Rangers in 2016 and showed great promise, slashing .266/.320/.419 and hitting 20 HR while finishing 5th in AL Rookie of the Year voting. Since then, the left-handed 24 year-old has maintained that slightly below average performance, posting a .268/.318/.469 campaign in 2019. He has failed to piece together a single season of at least 1.0 bWAR. For context, Joey Gallo had a bWAR of 3.0 in just 70 games in 2019. Mazara has simply failed to develop on the talent that he clearly possesses and put on display against his new team in June of this year when he unloaded on a 505-foot HR that may have still been on its way up when it hit the seats.
On the return, the Rangers get OF prospect Steele Walker who was the #6 ranked prospect in the White Sox’ system and finished 2019 in high-A ball. Walker is 23, but played 3 years in college at Oklahoma where he actually played in the same outfield as Arizona Cardinals quarterback and Oakland A’s first round draft pick Kyler Murray. He put up better numbers at OU than Murray, who declined a $4.9M signing bonus and chose to play football.
The move makes sense for both teams as the Rangers can clear a log-jam in their outfield that included budding star Joey Gallo, Delino DeShields, Willie Calhoun, and occasional appearances from utility man Danny Santana and Shin-Soo Choo. The White Sox, meanwhile, can take a chance on a low-risk, high-upside player in Mazara, who still has two years of control left before becoming eligible for free agency after the 2021 season.
We already saw a monster home run from Nomar Mazara, so enjoy this video of Steele Walker with an all-time pimp job from his high school days in Prosper, TX:
Grad School Sports™ 