The Texas League has announced that OF Dylan Carlson has been named the 2019 Texas League Player of the Year.
One of the youngest players in all of Double-A at only 20 years old, Carlson becomes the ninth St. Louis Cardinals prospect to win the Texas League Player of the Year award in its 89-year history. He joins OF Oscar Taveras (2012) and 1B Matt Adams (2011) as the three Springfield Cardinals who have taken home the league honors since the team’s inception in 2005, along with RHP Dakota Hudson winning Texas League Pitcher of the Year in 2017.
Among the accolades in his award-winning 2019 season, Carlson was named a Texas League All-Star Game starter, participated in the Texas League Home Run Derby and represented the Cardinals in the MLB All-Star Futures Game, in which he notched an RBI single.
Carlson exploded onto the scene this season, rocketing up MLB.com’s Prospect Rankings to No. 2 in St. Louis’s organization and No. 50 in all of Minor League Baseball while swinging his way to career-highs in average (.281), slugging (.518), home runs (21), hits (117), doubles (24), triples (6), stolen bases (18), OPS (.882), extra-base hits (51) and total bases (216) in 108 games.
Promoted to Triple-A Memphis on August 15, Carlson still remains among Texas League leaders in average (9th), home runs (1st), RBIs (59, T9th), OBP (.364, 5th), slugging (1st), OPS (2nd), hits (T8th), doubles (T8th), triples (8th), walks (52, 6th), extra-base hits (2nd), total bases (1st), runs (2nd) and stolen bases (T10th). He has only built on his 2019 campaign since getting the call to Memphis, where he’s slashing .455/.510/.773 with three doubles, one triple, three home runs and seven RBIs in 11 games and is just two steals away from a coveted 20-20 season overall. He hit safely in each of his first eight Triple-A games, tallying multiple hits in seven of those.
Carlson was selected by St. Louis in the 1st round (33rd overall) of the June, 2016 First-Year Player Draft out of Elk Grove (CA) High School, where he played for his father and former Head Coach, Jeff Carlson.
Joining historic company, the first-ever Texas League Player of the Year award was won by St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Famer Dizzy Dean of the Houston Buffaloes in 1931. The other St. Louis Cardinals to win the storied award are Nick Cullop (Houston Buffaloes, 1939), Jim Beauchamp (Tulsa Oilers, 1963), Héctor Cruz (Arkansas Travelers, 1973), Ray Lankford (Arkansas Travelers, 1989) and Tyrone Horne (Arkansas Travelers, 1998).
