Chris Young meeting his match, more evidence of the world being small with the Marco Gonzales addition, and the best BP of a young draftee’s life.

ARLINGTON — The past week has been a doozy for the Texas Rangers, on and off the field.

They’ve changed streaming providers, switching from Victory+, which the Rangers feared might not last through the season, to BZZR, which is short on apps for all TVs (but working on it, especially Roku). The portion of the fanbase affected by the change is none too happy.

Those fans may have missed that the Rangers didn’t play very well overall in the first four games coming out of the All-Star break at a critical time. The trade deadline is coming Aug. 3, and the Rangers need help in the bullpen and at catcher, and could use a righty-hitting center fielder.

They really need Corey Seager, who is getting better but still with no timeline for his return from the injured list.

Honestly, the Rangers might not be worth the deadline investment, but they are a playoff contender. It might be by default as the least-worst team in a division no one seems to want to win, but someone’s got to win the American League West. It might as well be the Rangers.

Team executives, both on the baseball side and the business/TV side, are jammed up. They aren’t having much fun. That doesn’t mean fun stuff isn’t happening with the Rangers.

Eye to eye

The one thing that stands out about president of baseball operations Chris Young is how he stands out in a crowd, well above all others. He’s 6-foot-10 and makes a 6-foot-4 guy look small, especially at a press conference.

He might have finally met his match Tuesday, when the Rangers introduced their first three draft selections. Gio Rojas and Connor Comeau are both 6-foot-4. But seated next to Young on the podium was third-rounder Brody Bumila, who is 6-foot-9 and potentially still growing at age 18.

“I think he might have me,” Young said.

Their height is only one thing they have in common. Both were standout basketball players in high school, both were standout pitchers and both were selected with the 89th overall pick in their drafts.

“I was aware that we were taking Brody with the 89th pick, which I found really, really neat,” Young said before naming another similarity they share. “But I think most importantly, what I love about Brody and Geo and Connor is that they remind me of when I was a high school or a college athlete –the competitive spirit, the self-belief, the confidence and the ambition and desire to be successful.”

Young and Bumila have two significant differences: Young is right-handed while Bumila is left-handed, and Young averaged less than 90 mph on his fastball for most of his career while Bumila has been clocked at 101 mph.

“I wish I was left-handed, and I wish I threw 100,” Young said. “But, nonetheless, I got more than I deserved.”

Bumila, as the Rangers knew, has an elbow injury that requires Tommy John surgery. He will have it after the Rangers’ draftees, 18 of them, go through an onboarding process in Arizona.

Front-range connection

Veteran left-hander Marco Gonzales, added to the Rangers’ bullpen Tuesday, is from Fort Collins, Colo. That’s some 45 minutes south of Cheyenne, Wyo., the hometown of right fielder Brandon Nimmo.

Gonzales is 34 years old, and Nimmo is 33. Wyoming does not have high school baseball, so Nimmo was forced into Colorado. He played both with and against Gonzales on various teams, some of them coached by Gonzales’ dad.

Gonzales’ dad and Nimmo’s dad are from the same hometown, La Junta, Colo., and knew each other as kids. Gonzales and Nimmo are now on the same major-league team and only five lockers apart in the clubhouse.

“It’s really cool to see him have so much success at this level and to follow him because I knew him as this scrawny little Wyoming kid that was blazing fast and just could hit the ball anywhere to the field,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales was the pitcher Nimmo’s coach always hyped up and said was the kind of pitcher Nimmo needed to have success against if he wanted to open eyes.

“It really is a small world,” Nimmo said.

It gets even smaller. Across the clubhouse is Cole Winn from Longmont, Colo., roughly 25 minutes south of Fort Collins. Gonzales’ father used to run baseball camps that Winn attended.

“I was probably running around helping with the camp,” Gonzales said. “It’s just wild. It’s cool stories to hear.”

Clutch performance

Comeau seemed to enjoy himself the most at the presser for the three top draftees, joking that signing his pro contract took him back to all the times his dad would yell at him to stop rolling over at the plate.

The Rangers nabbed him at 54th overall after he performed well at a predraft workout at Globe Life Field. There were several targets there, but Comeau thinks he knows what he stood out.

“It was the best BP round I have ever hit in my life,” he said. “I mean, I don’t think I missed the barrel, and I was just having a good time.”

The Rangers had been scouting Comeau, who went to Austin Anderson High School, for some time. He had lunch in the spring with amateur scouting director Kip Fagg and became close with first-year area scout Konner Piotto, who retired as a player in the Rangers’ organization after last season.

_{Jeff Wilson, jwilson@alldlls.com}