Rangers top prospects: No. 7 David Davalillo can use his stuff

SURPRISE, Ariz.—While the Texas Rangers have spent the past year trading away eight of their top-30 prospects to fortify the major-league rotation, right-hander David Davalillo has quietly climbed the organizational ladder on the strength of precision rather than power.

Signed out of Venezuela on a minor-league deal in mid-2022 after the New York Mets originally inked him, Davalillo has produced a 2.35 ERA across 241 professional innings. The 5-foot-11, 180-pounder’s calling card is a five-pitch mix—four-seam and two-seam fastballs, splitter, curveball and slider—delivered with plus control. He walked only 28 batters in 107 innings last season while striking out 126, good for a 66 percent career strike rate.

“He has arguably the best pitchability in the system,” club evaluators say, pointing to a repeatable delivery that held right-handed hitters to a .174 average and left-handed hitters to .198 between High-A Hub City and Double-A Frisco in 2023. His fastball touches the mid-90s, yet its value lies more in location than velocity.

The lack of a single dominant offering keeps Davalillo from the elite tier of arms, but the Rangers have increasingly prioritized strike-throwers over high-octane projects. Added to the 40-man roster last fall and invited to big-league camp, he logged one Cactus League appearance before being optioned back to Frisco, where he posted a 2.73 ERA in 56 innings a year ago.

Davalillo’s path forward is straightforward: continue filling the zone, refine his secondaries, and prove that command can trump pure stuff. If the 23-year-old succeeds, he could provide an internal answer to a farm system that Baseball America ranks No. 24 after the recent trades for Merrill Kelly and MacKenzie Gore.

Davalillo comes from a distinguished baseball bloodline—great-uncle Vic Davalillo was a two-time All-Star outfielder and Venezuelan Hall of Famer; grandfather Pompeyo, a shortstop, shares the same honor; brother Gabriel catches in the Angels system—but his own résumé is beginning to stand on its own.

Texas will open the season hoping that near-proximity prospects like Davalillo rebound and restock a system that has fallen to the lower third of MLB Pipeline evaluations. How quickly they progress will determine whether the Rangers can sustain last year’s championship-level momentum without further gutting the pipeline.