After Texas Rangers GM Jon Daniels made the announcement last month that hot prospects Jurickson Profar and Mike Olt would start the season in Triple-A Round Rock, it killed a little bit of excitement among some Rangers fans who wanted to see the young kids, especially Profar, get their big-league chance.
Now those fans can maybe get a little excitement back, at least for the time being, because the Rangers announced that the two top prospects will get some work in the outfield when the team reports to Surprise, Ariz., for spring training.
Olt has seen time as an outfielder before, both at the minor-league and major-league level, even though his natural position is as a third baseman with a secondary role being at first base. With the Rangers' uncertainty in the outfield heading into the season, Olt could play into that conversation.
The bigger surprise here is that Profar will work in the outfield, even though his skill set would seem to fit in center where the Rangers already have two players set to platoon in Craig Gentry and Leonys Martin. When Ian Kinsler made it known he didn't want to play first base, after all, it squeezed Profar out of the middle infield conversation, at least for the time being, but the Rangers seem to want to find a way to get Profar into the lineup some way, somehow.
One positive to leaving the two in the minors to start the season is their service clock won't start and they'll be under team control for that much longer. Plus, unless they are going to play every day it's kind of a waste of their talent to let them be bench players for the Rangers.
