Within the last hour, the talks between the Texas Rangers and Philadelphia Phillies are “pretty deep” regarding Vince Velasquez, as Jim Salisbury of CSNPhilly is reporting. He adds that Jeremy Hellickson is also an interest of the Rangers, however. He is not the Rangers primary target
According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, The Texas Rangers are “all over” the 24-year-old pitcher. He says that the Texas Rangers have done a large amount of work, through it is the same amount of work for any significant investment. There are several scouts from the Rangers organization who is on hand tonight to watch Velasquez pitch. Several MLB insiders are stating there is serious interest in the 24-year-old pitcher.
Velasquez has been quite impressive this year, pitching to an ERA of 3.34 with 10.1 K/9 against 3.3 B/9. With just 86 days of MLB service entering the 2016 season, he has a lot of reasonable control left. For a major market like the Phillies, who will no doubt hope to ramp up their competitiveness in the National League in short order, it was difficult to imagine a deal coming together without an actually amount of talent coming back to the Phillies.
The Texas Rangers are also said to be interested in Chris Sale of the White Sox and Chris Archer of the Rays. With Texas having an enormous amount interest in so many starter pitchers, it is due to the vast amount of injuries that have faced their pitching staff. These type of reports will be coming into full swing as we enter the last days before the 4 pm deadline on Monday, August 1st.
So it is unknown at this time what deals will go down, but stay tuned to Inscriber as we will keep our readers up-to-date on the latest news surrounding the deadline.