Interview Outtakes: Rangers shortstop Michael De Leon

By MiLB.com

By Ashley Marshall / MiLB.com

Our long-form feature on Texas Rangers’ teenage shortstop Michael De Leon dropped on MiLB.com this morning. Here are some more quotes about De Leon from the people who know him the best in the organization.

Rangers’ director of international scouting Gil Kim on De Leon’s growth:

I’ve known Michael since he was 14 years old. He had trained with Valentin Monero, who is a very established trainer in the Dominican. But everything starts with Danilo Troncoso, who is our area scout in the East. And he brought Mikie to our attention when he was 14, and I’m sure he has been watching him since he was 12 or 13. He started taking us to [academy director] Valentin [Moreno’s] place for tryouts and insisting on him. Danilo had always told us that he had a different spirit about him. He had a different type of confidence and he knew how to play the game. They’re now some of the reasons why he’s advancing so rapidly through the system, because of his energy, because of his confidence, because of his love for playing the game. They stuck out in Danilo’s mind and they were evident right away when we got to watch him play.

We watched him run the 60[-yard dash], take BP, field ground balls. [He] lacked strength in his body, but the one thing he would always do was catch every single ball and make accurate throws, and then in the game he’d find a way to put the bat on the ball and hardly made mistakes. Michael is a special kid. There are very few people in the organization, from our cleaning ladies in Hickory to our players in Round Rock and our coaches in Frisco to our scouts in the Dominican, that would have anything negative to say about him.

Rangers’ senior director of Minor League operations Mike Daly on De Leon’s strengths:

The biggest thing he does is that he’s a very sure-handed at shortstop. He has a very good internal clock and he knows game speed when he has to be quick on a throw or when he can slow it down. At the plate, he makes contact from both sides of the plate and he can battle the pitchers no matter how hard they’re throwing. He can execute whatever the game calls for, whether that’s putting down a sacrifice bunt, moving a runner over, executing a hit and run or getting a guy in from third base. He really knows how to play the game on both sides of the ball.

He’s still learning some of the intricacies of the game. Each team has its own sets of bunt plays and cuts and relays, and Michael was able to pick those up quickly, and he has a real good feel for playing the game. He loves to play baseball and that was one of the things we were drawn to him as a tryout player. He loves to compete and he’s not scared, and when you put those intangibles with his makeup, we feel like we’re very lucky to have signed him.

Hickory Crawdads manager Corey Ragsdale on his first impressions of De Leon:

I’d seen him in instructs and knew the kind of player he was. I knew he had good hands and could play defensively. We threw him out there and that was exactly the case — he gained the confidence of his teammates and pitching staff by the way he played defense behind those guys. He fit right in and did very, very well, and the way, unexpectedly, he handled the bat and put at-bats together. The numbers he put up and the at-bats he had, he ended up hitting leadoff for us at the end of the year and did very, very well.

Right now, he needs to work on his strength. That’s what was so impressive with his offense — to be 17 years old, not very strong at all and still have the swings he did was very impressive. He hits from both sides of the plate, very similar from both sides. He has a little bit of a leg kick in there that can get a little long at times.

Ragsdale on De Leon’s defense:

It starts with the eyes and he reads the ball off the bat very well. The feet move very well. He has some work to do with his straight ahead speed but the quickness in the feet is there defensively. He gets his body in a good position and his hands are very good and work well. It’s impressive to see a kid his age be able to do what he does as consistently as he does. He has plenty of arm to stay on that side of the infield for a long time.

He’s a special kid. He has the instincts that make him a great player. The hands, the feet, the eye at the plate, the hands at the plate — he’s going to be a very good baseball player. He has a lot of drive and determination and he wants to be good. He loves playing the game, and over the course of the year that’s very refreshing. The kid always has a smile on his face and he wants to play every day.

Rangers’ area scout Danilo Troncoso on De Leon’s intangibles:

Apart from his baseball abilities, the biggest thing that made an impression on me was his intelligence and his desire and his love for the game. He’s an excellent kid — very humble, very hard-working. He’s a family guy, someone who is very close to his mother and grandmother.