Season Preview: Texas Rangers

Just two days remain til Opening Day, and they are a Friday and Saturday, respectively. Which is pretty sweet. Anyway - lineup, pitchers, record, beer. It's not quite GTL, but it'll have to do. Up next: the Texas Rangers


Lineup: Let's start with the outfield. Julio Borbon is getting a chance to put his wheels to work as the full-time center fielder; best case is that he hits for average and gets on base well while stealing plenny bases. Flanking him  are Josh Hamilton, whose talent and injury history are well documented, and Nelson Cruz, who possesses a great power-speed combo. Cruz, though, will have to overcome what we're sure is an enormous mental hurdle in order to perform despite incessant ridicule from his teammates about his appearance in ESPN Magazine's Body issue. Oh, and Vlad Guerrero could see some time out here - though we'll have to, like, light a candle for him, since we're fairly sure that anything beyond DHing would straight up break him at this point. David Murphy is a decent backup, though. As for the infield, Michael Young posted his best season in years while transitioning to third base; his replacement, Elvis Andrus, wasn't much with the stick (though he's barely legal to drink), but was a 3-win player based on his strong defense. Andrus' double play partner is one of the best second basegentlemen in the league; Ian Kinsler has an above-average power/speed combo (we feel like this word gets thrown around a lot with the Rangers) for anyone, let alone someone manning the keystone. Chris Davis will get another shot at the first base job; he has mammoth power, but his contact skills are, to put it very charitably, lacking. Best case for him is a .260 average to accompany his 45 tater tots - and he's going to have to approach the best case in order to stave off Justin Smoak. Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Taylor Teagarden are a catching duo that has underwhelmed to this point, but Salty still has time to make good on his top prospect status, and Tegarden is a defensive whiz - which helps compensate for his below-average bat.

Rotation: This could either be a very strong or a very weak group. Yay firm predictions! Scott Feldman's peripherals suggest that he was far better than his poor ERA suggested, and Rich Harden could put together an enormous season if he stays healthy. Which we're pretty sure is verbatim what every single baseball scribe has written about him since he broke into the league. Ugh. And if the organization is serious about converting C.J. Wilson to the rotation - a decision we simply cannot support - then he'll be the number three starter. He could be decent, we suppose, but he's blocking the far more talented Neftali Feliz. Rounding out the rotation are Colby Lewis - Carson Cistulli's cause celebre - for whom we have high hopes and southpaw Matt Harrison, who could easily be a league average sort of gentleman. Plus with Feliz and assorted other young talent potentially ready to step in, there's plenty of depth for an already talented group.

Bullpen: Finishing games is what Frank Francisco does, and he does it pretty well. He'll be the closer this season, provided he manages to refrain from decking another fan with a thrown folding chair. Neftali Feliz, injustice though it may be, will likely be joining Francisco as a late-inning guy, and should be just as electric as he was last season. Darren Oliver was great for the Angels last season, but he's nearly twice as old as us and doesn't do as well against lefty hitters as you'd expect from a southpaw. Chris Ray is the former Baltimore closer, who had electric stuff prior to Tommy John surgery. Regaining his control has been a struggle, but he's a guy to keep your eye on. Darren O'Day and Dustin Nippert present little in the way of things to complain about; they're perfectly serviceable guys to chew up some innings here and there. Good group overall.

Overall: This is the year that most people predicted the Rangers would be in competition, though this squad surprised most people by being neck and neck with the Angels throughout most of 2009. They're improved, for sure, but the lineup doesn't have much depth and we have our concerns about the young pitchers holding up during what should be a season-long divisional dogfight. They're probably a better team than the Mariners overall - and certainly so when accounting for the wealth of young talent in the farm system - but for some reason we think the M's are juuust going to squeak out the divisional title.

Predicted Record: 85-77, 2nd place AL West

Beer: Shiner Bock. Shiner Bock is a beer that seems to aspire to the darkness of a true bock, but doesn't quite get there - it's far less full-bodied than most bocks, but is still delicious. Similarly, the Rangers are a team that has realistic championship aspirations, but they're not quite on the level of the Big Eastern Three. Both Shiner and the Rangers have come upon a winning formula - Shiner makes a tasty beer, and the Rangers develop phenomenal talent - but it's going to be another year before the Rangers are a serious World Series contender, and it'll take some recipe changes before Shiner Bock becomes a real Bock.

Don't Forget Your Gloves

We're sure that you've already heard plenty about how MLB teams have been placing an increased emphasis on defense of late.  This is due in part to a revolution in defensive evaluation: as more and more batted ball data emerges, defensive statistics have become increasingly useful and accurate, and teams have been able to reap the benefits.  The Rays became the poster child for this movement after they essentially reversed their record from a last-place 66-96 to a pennant-winning 97-65.  While this was not due entirely to defense, one of the major changes that ownership brought about was to place the emphasis on defense that saw them rise from a third-worst -6.5 UZR/150 in 2007 to 2nd-best 11.0 in 2008 (it also seems worth mentioning that the only team better was the Phillies, at 14.8, and we all know how that ended).   

That said, let's take a look at who's shown the biggest improvements on defense this season.  We're going to use FanGraphs' UZR/150 as our quick and dirty stat, though we admit that it has its flaws, as does any defensive metric.  In any event, who's pulled a Tampa this season?  

UZR Change 08-09

One general note: it's interesting that so many of the teams that were near the bottom of the pack in '08 showed the greatest improvements in '09.  There's two ways to look at this development.  Optimistically, you could say that the front offices of these teams are smart, recognized that they could stand to improve on defense, then took steps to correct the problem.  Or, we guess you could just point out that since they started low, they had nowhere to go but up.  To which we say: you a dark, dark person.  

In any event, the top of the list isn't very surprising.  Detroit, Seattle, and Texas are three teams that everyone knew was making a newfound commitment to defense.  The Tigers brought in Adam Everett and haven't had to suffer Carlos Guillen and Miguel Cabrera's defensive stylings.  Franklin Gutierrez, Endy Chavez, and Ichiro make up the best defensive outfield in the game, and Adrian Beltre is no slouch.  Even the Rangers have talked all season about making a commitment to defense, perhaps best evidenced by their willingness to rush glove wizard SS Elvis Andrus to the bigs at the tender age of 20.  But we'd never have guessed about the Reds and Pirates.  What happened there?

In Cincinnati, they've got an outfield that is similar to the Mariners' group in terms of defensive excellence.  Among guys with 300 innings, Drew Stubbs, Willy Taveras, Jay Bruce, and Laynce Nix have been flat out excellent.  They've only got three guys posting negative ratings, and Edwin Encarnacion's -17.2 is now Toronto's problem.  Plus, Joey Votto (-1.3 at 1st base) and Adam Rosales (-0.9 at 3rd) are hardly huge liabilities.  This is an overall solid group that, if they could hit and/or pitch, would be great.

There's a different story out in the Burgh, though.  Their two best defenders, Nyjer Morgan (+24.1) (!) and Jack Wilson (+17) are gone, and they've got serious defensive holes with 2B Delwyn Young, SS Ronny Cedeno, and RF Garrett Jones.  This is a case where you see the leftover contributions of the dearly departed having an unfairly positive effect on the team as a whole.  

So after that negative note, let's take a look at the bottom part of this chart.  The Mets really stand out, as they've gone from pretty good to abysmal.  However, even we can't hold them fully responsible for this drastic defensive decline; after all, as has been the case with every other facet of their season, the amount of injuries they've suffered has greatly affected their ability to play with their desired alignments.  It's not their fault, for example, that Anderson Hernandez and Alex Cora have played a lot of shortstop.  But some of their guys really are just outright bad defenders (see: Wright, David; Sheffield, Gary; Castillo, Luis; Francoeur, Jeff (ha!)).  So this ranking is not entirely undeserved.

The Phillies have regressed quite a bit, but it can be hard to maintain the level of excellence that they established last season.  For what it's worth, the entire roster of regulars (300+ innings) is basically solid but unspectacular at defense; Chase Utley leads the club with a +8.7 mark, and Shane Victorino is the only subzero straggler, with a -3.8 rating.  

For people that are searching for reasons as to why the Cubs have disappointed this year, one to point to could be their defensive shortcomings.  Milton Bradley was pretty bad in the outfield - we know, Milton, we're singling you out and there's a negative atmosphere in this blog, but you're a DH in the NL - but not nearly as bad as Alfonso Soriano, who's been one of the worst left fielders in the game.  Jake Fox has seen too much time at third base, but Aramis Ramirez is no great shakes with the glove himself, and Mike Fontenot hasn't contributed much in the way of...well, anything, really, but he's been really bad at defense.  Guy's got a great baseball card, though. 

So what do we take away from all of this?  Well, improving defense isn't guaranteed to make you a contender, but it's an effective, affordable way to upgrade your club.  Or at least it was affordable; as it becomes a more valued, quantifiable skill, teams are going to pay more for premium defenders.  It's the Moneyball concept: teams could win on the cheap by identifying inefficiencies in the player market and exploiting them.  For a few years, that inefficiency was OBP; of late, it's defense.  But as teams start paying and playing guys like Adam Everett, Elvis Andrus, Endy Chavez and Adam Dunn (still paying attention?) who are offensive zeros but save enough runs to be valuable, it's going to be time to find another inefficiency.  Our prediction?   Soon you'll be hearing about how the Rays/Rangers/Other Upstart Team have been great because all their hitters are otherworldly bunters.  That'll be a fun couple of seasons.