Buster Olney tabs Wyatt Langford as ‘baseball’s next monster star’

This time last year, Wyatt Langford was playing for the Florida Gators. Now he’s starting for the Texas Rangers and being tabbed as one of the future stars of Major League Baseball.

Langford made the Rangers Opening Day lineup, going 1-for-3 with an RBI in an extra-innings win over the Cubs. It has been a quick rise for the outfielder, who ESPN analyst Buster Olney recently predicted will be a huge star in the not-too-distant future.

“He is baseball’s next monster star,” Buster Olney said recently on The Tony Kornheiser podcast. “A year ago he was playing against Ole Miss for Florida, and since he was drafted fourth overall last year, he has not known failure.”

Wyatt Langford hit .373 with 21 home runs and 57 RBIs across 64 games at Florida last season, before being selected by the Rangers early in the first round of the MLB draft.

In 44 games in the minors last year, Langford hit .360 with 10 homers and 30 RBIs. He continued to crush the ball in spring training ahead of the 2024 MLB season, earning a spot in the Opening Day lineup. He was in the five-hole for Texas in its opener against the Cubs.

“We’ve always heard those stories about how teams want to leave players in the minors until they have extended failure. He’s had nothing like that,” Olney said. “Basically, at every level, his OPS has been no less than 1,100. He’s dominated spring training.”

Across 63 at bats and over 21 games in spring training, Wyatt Langford hit .365 with six home runs and 20 RBIs. Rangers manager Bruce Bochy told Olney that they love everything about Langford.

“I talked to Bruce Bochy, their manager about him yesterday, and he talks about how his mental makeup reminds him so much of Buster Posey,” Olney relayed. “Just absolutely steady personality. Guys like Nate Eovaldi are talking about the great adjustments he makes.”

While Langford is currently hitting fifth for Texas, Olney wouldn’t be surprised at all to see him move up in the lineup as the season goes along. Being in the starting lineup for the defending World Series champions less than a year after getting drafted is impressive, but it seems that Langford is just getting started.

“At the beginning of the season he’s probably going to hit fifth-sixth in the Texas lineup. But it might be that within a couple of months, you’re going to see a guy, playing on the defending champions with players like Marcus Semien and Corey Seager, Adolis Garcia, hitting third in the Texas lineup,” Olney said. “I mean he has been killing it this spring, and he looks like he’s just going to take off.”