The Rangers have made a habit out of finding value on Day 3 of the draft, and this year's version is Jackson Nash, a 6-foot-6, 235-pound right-hander out of Longwood who barely anyone outside the Big South Conference was talking about a month ago. Texas popped him with the 357th overall pick, then went well over slot to get him signed instead of letting him walk back to school.
Jim Callis broke down the signing, the bonus figure, and why scouts liked Nash's arm.
12th-rder Jackson Nash signs w/@Rangers for $170k ($20k counts vs bonus pool). Sleeper @LongwoodBase RHP, 92-94 mph fastball reaches 96 & explodes on hitters, interesting low-80s changeup too. @MLBDraft
According to Callis, Nash inked for $170,000, with $20,000 of that counting against Texas' draft bonus pool -- standard math for a 12th-round senior sign whose slot value is a fraction of that number. The appeal is obvious: a fastball that sits 92-94 and touches 96, paired with a low-80s changeup that gives him a real weapon against both sides of the plate. That's a big league arsenal buried in a mid-major program most casual fans have never heard of.
Nash spent his only season in Farmville going 4-2 with a 4.26 ERA across 44 1/3 innings and 19 appearances for Longwood in 2026, per the school's athletics site. Not eye-popping numbers on the surface, but that's exactly the profile teams love digging up late -- a big-framed arm whose raw stuff outpaces his college stat line, the kind of sleeper a pro pitching lab can actually do something with.
This is part of a bigger picture for Texas, which came into this draft with a bonus pool north of $10.2 million, the 18th-largest allotment in baseball. Signing a projectable arm like Nash for over-slot money on Day 3 only works because the Rangers saved money elsewhere in the class -- the classic trade-off where an over-slot senior sign in one round subsidizes an underslot deal in another.
It's not a headline-grabbing move on its own, but stacking up sleepers like Nash is exactly how a farm system gets deeper without ever picking in the top 10. If that fastball plays the same in pro ball as it did against Big South hitters, Texas just got itself a nice value add for $170K.