July 13, 2009

Thirty Teams in Three Days, Texas Rangers

The All-Star break affords the opportunity to look back at the first half to see what went right and wrong for the thirty MLB teams. The Texas Rangers are up next, and here is the pre-season post on the AL West.

Texas Rangers through the All-Star break, 2009
Statistic Texas AL Rank
Runs per Game 4.94 6th
Batting Averge .255 12th
On-Base Average .317 11th-T
Slugging Percentage .454 2nd
ERA 4.34 8th
Strikeouts per 9 IP 5.7 14th
Walks per 9 ip 3.41 8th
HR per 200 IP 25.5 10th

What Went Right

The move to improve the defense by moving Michael Young to third and placing Elvis Andrus at shortstop worked perfectly. Like the Mariners, the Rangers pitching staff is outperforming their three true outcomes, and one reason is that Texas ranks fourth in defense according to FanGraphs. (Note that Young is not very good at third base, he just gets less chances there.) The better defense allowed the Rangers starting pitchers to go deeper into games, 6.0 per start. That’s 9th in the majors and fourth in the AL.

The two veterans they picked up as insurance also hit well. Omar Vizquel is back to getting on base at a .350 clip, and Andruw Jones saw his power return, and is playing good defense as well.

What Went Wrong

The offense became too one dimensional. The team does a poor job of both hitting for average and getting on base, so if an opponent can shut down their power, the Rangers can’t fall back on other ways to score. The back of the order is particularly weak with the six through nine slots all under .310 in OBA, and seven through nine all under .300. The recently demoted Chris Davis is the poster child for this offense with a slash line of .202/.256/.415. Then again, if a team has a problem with offense at first base, that’s among the easiest problems to solve.

Like the Mariners, the Rangers need someone who doesn’t make outs to round out the lineup. They have plenty of power already. A strikeout pitcher would help, also, to take some pressure off the defense.

Other teams in this series:

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