Texas Rangers News: First-Round Pick to Debut, Replacing Injured Star
When Tampa Bay Rays reliever Phil Maton entered the game Monday against the Texas Rangers, things escalated quickly and resulted in Josh Jung being diagnosed with a fractured wrist.
With Jung going on the injured list, the Rangers are calling up one of their top prospects. Justin Foscue will be promoted from Triple-A Round Rock ahead of Tuesday night’s game against the Rays, a source told MLB.com following the initial report by ESPN.
Maton, who spent last season with the Houston Astros, hit three Rangers batters. With one out and runners on first and second, Maton hit Rangers batters Evan Carter and Adolis Garcia consecutively. Then against Jung, Maton ran the count to 2-1 and threw one up and in. Jung began to swing and then tried to get out of the way. He was too late, and Maton’s pitch hit him on the wrist.
Texas manager Bruce Bochy has no timetable for Jung’s return.
“I just feel horrible for him,” Bochy told Bally Sports Southwest. “He’s had such tough luck on this thing as far as the injuries and it puts a damper on this one… He’ll be back. I talked to him briefly, and this hurts. You know I feel for the kid because he’s had to deal with so much. It’s going to be a little while but he’ll be back.”
Through his first four games of 2024, Jung went 7-for-17 with two walks, one double, one triple, and two home runs.
Jung has had tough luck with injuries throughout his career. He missed some time during spring training with a calf strain. Most of his injuries have come during camp. He was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his left foot going into camp in 2021, then tore a labrum in his left (non-throwing) shoulder while lifting weights during camp in 2022. Both injuries delayed his major league debut until September of ’22.
He’s had some bad luck again,” Bochy said. “I just told him he will be back. He’s pretty down, as he should be because he was just coming off that calf injury and playing well, swinging the bat well. It’s not easy to have a setback when you’ve had so many of them, but he’s got to keep telling himself he’ll be back. He’s young. He’s going to have a nice long career, and this is just another little setback here for him.”
The 25-year-old Foscue was the Rangers’ first-round pick in the 2020 draft and can play first base, second base, and third base. He spent all of last season in Triple-A, slashing .266/.394/.468 with 18 homers and more walks (85) than strikeouts (70) across 122 games.
