Prospect Santos 'electric' in Spring Breakout start

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Malcolm Moore knew Winston Santos was locked in before he even threw a pitch.

In the second annual Spring Breakout game, Santos -- the Rangers’ No. 5 prospect, per MLB Pipeline -- was throwing to Moore, the Rangers’ No. 4 prospect and highest-ranked catcher. The battery more than delivered in a 5-5 tie vs. Giants prospects.

Santos cruised through his Spring Breakout start, tossing three perfect frames with six strikeouts: four swinging, one looking and one via pitch timer violation. He threw an efficient 37 pitches, 26 for strikes with 12 whiffs.

“You don't get a guy locked in like that very often,” Moore said. “When you do, you like to catch that. You wish everybody was like that every time, honestly. It's fun, because it doesn't really matter what I put down. He's just going to do it and it's going to get the guy out.

“You could see it when he was warming up. You can kind of just see it in the way it's coming out of his hand, and the way that he’s going about his business and the confidence that he has. It's a whole body confidence. … He was electric.”

When asked if Moore was correct in his assumption, Santos said he did feel locked in because he prepared as well as possible beforehand. He felt ready to do his job from the jump.

“I’ve learned a lot this spring and I’ve been enjoying making adjustments and I'm just ready to go,” Santos said through interpreter Nick Janssen. “I made some small changes to improve my control [last season] and I just enjoy the game. I just want to keep learning. Those adjustments helped me. I just want to keep building and getting better.”

His professional debut was delayed due to the pandemic, but there were high expectations both internally and externally. He threw just 33 innings in 2021 before posting a 3.49 ERA in 108 1/3 innings with Single-A Down East in 2022.

Santos is part of the latest crop of Rangers pitching prospects looking to turn the tide on the organizational perception regarding pitching development.

There’s Cody Bradford, who ingrained himself in the big league rotation before an injury this spring, the Vandy Boys duo of Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker knocking on the door as we speak, and then Santos and Emiliano Teodo -- who cleaned up a bases-loaded jam in relief in Spring Breakout -- headlining the next group of homegrown starting pitchers.

“We've talked a lot about our pitching pipeline, our pitching development practices, and we're not all the way there yet,” general manager Ross Fenstermaker said earlier this week. “We feel like we've created quite a decent-sized group in terms of guys that can come up and help contribute here in the near future. I feel like in some ways, [Teodo] has become too famous with what he's done here in camp, and Winston is right behind him as well.”

Santos was signed for just $10,000 out of the Dominican Republic in the Rangers’ 2019-20 international class, and it’s been an improbable rise and fall and rise again for him in the following years.

But then he struggled to a 6.29 ERA in 98 2/3 innings with High-A Hickory in 2024 before finally showing his full potential in 2024.

He boasted a 3.67 ERA between Hickory and Double-A Frisco last season, leading the farm in wins (11) and strikeouts (138 in 110 1/3 innings). He pitched in the All-Star Futures Game and was added to the Rangers’ 40-man roster this offseason.

Frisco manager Carlos Cardoza, who also managed the Spring Breakout game, raved about Santos last season and is even higher on the 22-year-old now.

“I see an electric fastball and improvement in his secondary stuff,” Cardoza said. “Once he was able to get the slider underneath the bats, it just kind of took off from there. That's between the lines. I think what stood out the most was his professionalism and how steadfast and committed he was to his routine and his body and his work between starts.”

“We’re seeing all see the fruits of the labor that's been put in the last couple of years and the kind of synergy that exists between the different departments [in pitching development]. Ross has said it: It’s not a finished product by any means, but it's certainly a bright spot with what the system is doing.”