Tekoah Roby toes the rubber in Springfield tonight, 627 days after he was traded by the Texas Rangers at the MLB trade deadline in 2023. The 21-year-old Roby had caught the eye of a Cardinals’ organization desperate for dynamic arms by recording 50 strikeouts over ten starts with the Frisco RoughRiders, and he appeared on the fast-track to “Baseball Heaven” in St. Louis.
Instead, Roby has endured Texas League purgatory for 20 months – a sentence that may soon end.
Tekoah has been dominant in two starts – 8 innings, 0 runs, 1 walk, 10 strikeouts, and a 0.75 WHIP. Last week at the hitter’s paradise in Amarillo – where the final scores at Hodgetown Stadium often look more like a football game – Roby kept the Sod Poodles quiet.
“I think my fastball was just really, really good. Like, I was executing it well, it was hard – it was just making hitters uncomfortable, I was moving it in-and-out and up-and-down. That was kind of the gamechanger, was the fastball,” he said after torching Amarillo with heaters in the upper 90’s.
Roby struck out the side in the opening frame, setting down Diamondbacks’ 2023 first round pick Tommy Troy and second rounder LuJames Groover in consecutive at-bats. One of Roby’s former teammates with the Rangers helped refine Tekoah’s sinker in the offseason and it’s paying dividends.
Here are all 12 whiffs Tekoah Roby induced last night https://t.co/8oqXdFsZ2W pic.twitter.com/hWp4lVd58x
— Kareem (@KareemSSN) April 12, 2025
“The sinker has been really fun, to kind of see it play. I gave up a base hit on it (in Amarillo), but the process was great – it was located well, I got weak contact. Even in the first start (against Wichita on April 5), I got a few groundballs when I needed it – a groundball double play when I needed it,” Roby said.
“I’m having a lot of fun, no matter how “little league” it sounds, that’s what we do, we play a game. It’s important to remember to have fun – it’s been awesome to see the results be good but ultimately that’s not what makes the game fun. Winning is fun, obviously competitors want to win, but if that’s where the fun comes from, that’s going to run out…finding the fun in the boring part of the process and then everything that happens in the clubhouse, the bus trips, enjoying that as much as you possibly can. Taking moments to be like, ‘Wow, this is fun’,” he said.
The last two years have been anything but carefree.
Roby was nagged by shoulder injuries in 2023 and pitched just 12 innings for Springfield after the trade. He made seven starts in 2024 before an elbow injury put Roby on the shelf for most of the season. Idle time did not do Roby any favors, and the frustration from watching others from afar reached a boiling point.
“Last year was just another opportunity to learn and grow, but I didn’t really handle it all that well,” he said prior to Opening Day. “There was a lot of bitterness – yeah, I don’t think I handled it that well to be honest…I think this offseason, not on purpose, I stumbled back into my faith. Different mentors, people that are really close to me being really honest with me about how I was handling what was happening in my career – that was a big part of my offseason, becoming more whole spiritually as well.”
The mental battle for Roby extended into digital space, as highlights of his peers’ success went viral while he rehabbed.
“Especially in the world of social media, everybody (in professional baseball) has good stuff. It’s very easy to look around and say, ‘Oh I want that pitch’ or ‘I want to strike out more hitters because he’s striking out more hitters’. It’s really easy to lose sight of what you do well, when everybody around you is doing cool stuff with the baseball.”
“We try educate (players) on how to get rid of the noise and the distractions and understand what that is,” Springfield manager Patrick Anderson said. “There are so many avenues that can either cloud you or help you – trying to decipher that for the individual is a tough thing to do…getting to know Roby, he’s a really good kid. He’s grounded, very grounded. Just trying to see if he doesn’t do too much and understand what that means for him.”
