This story was excerpted from Kennedi Landry's Rangers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Baseball is not a sport where a high Draft pick is an automatic franchise-changer who turns an organization into a World Series contender. There is no LeBron James or franchise quarterback in the MLB Draft.

But taking all that into consideration, it’s hard to ignore that, this year, the Rangers have a second consecutive top-three pick following a full-scale organizational rebuild. Texas’ most recent homegrown talent was Joey Gallo, who the club selected in the supplemental first round of the 2012 Draft.

Texas has spent its last three first-round selections on college players in Josh Jung (No. 8, 3B, 2019), Justin Foscue (No. 14, 3B, '20) and Jack Leiter (No. 2, RHP, '21). Texas isn’t super likely to go for a college bat for the third time in four years, but it’s not totally out of the question with Cal Poly’s Brooks Lee being one of the Draft’s most polished hitters.

The top five picks in this year’s Draft are nearly agreeable across all prospect sites, and include a trio of elite high school bats in outfielders Druw Jones (son of Andruw Jones) and Elijah Green, and shortstop Jackson Holliday (son of Matt Holliday). Lee and Georgia Tech catcher Kevin Parada round out the five prospects who the Rangers have their eye on the most.

More than anything, it seems like the Rangers, at No. 3, will be forced to wait until Baltimore and Arizona make their picks. Jones and Holliday are atop most every Draft board, and if both are off by the time Texas makes its pick, it may shake up the club’s selection.

“We’re still in the middle of it right now,” said president of baseball operations Jon Daniels. “Our guys are just upstairs meeting. I think there’s a pretty interesting group of players up there. We don't really know what's going on ahead of us [with the Orioles and D-backs], so I think we're lining them up in the order that we want and talking through various scenarios that could play out.”

Last year, when the Rangers selected Leiter at No. 2 overall, they gave the right-hander the highest bonus in the 2021 Draft at $7,922,000. This year, Texas’ slot for the first-round pick sits at $7,587,600 for a total Draft pool of $9,640,700.

Notably, the Rangers do not have a second- or third-round pick due to the offseason signings of Corey Seager and Marcus Semien. Daniels said that won’t affect how they approach the first round, but it could change the strategy on Day 2.

While the high school bats may not fit perfectly into the Rangers’ perceived window of contention, Daniels notes the organization has always felt it was necessary to select the best available player regardless of “need.”

“We never really or ever really will focus on the short term,” Daniels said. “Drafting up that high and really any first-round pick, especially with the higher ones, you’re looking at who you think can make the most significant long term impact on the club. That’s gonna be the mindset.”