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Rangers mailing list posts that got kinda long, #29 |
... that's not so bad.
And they lost the 2 games before it, and the one after it, by a single run given up in the 9th. Poor Johnny Rock. That boy has to be on the worst emotional roller coaster you can have without losing a family member.
Juando took a lame swing on 3-1 with the game on the line last night. I'm waiting for him to get into a groove.
YEAR OPS SLG Career 345 564 2001 370 590 2002 335 438
I think that his hands still hurt. A night or two ago, he made a wild throw to the plate - and the hitter moved up to second. Juan looks like he wants to win and like he's pressing to try to contribute. I think that if they would switch to the red uniforms, he would be okay and they would win more games.
I've decided that the four things affecting this team's performance are mental outlook, durability, talent, and coaching. I think that GaryC is right about the manager's shortcomings when handling pitchers. Let's dissect the bullpen another day. Today I'd like to suggest that durability has hurt this team more than most other teams.
My basic evidence is based on plate appearances. Of course the best players have more plate appearances than the other players, and it is my belief that availability of the six or eight best players has a relation to offense. You could probably do the same thing with innings and defense - and combine the two for victories. What I really want to do is find a way to measure who is missing their best players, and for that I stick with the simple plate appearance.
It's calculated as the sum of at-bats, walks, hit by pitch, and sacrifice hits (AB+BB+HBP+SH). The MLB site shows the stat as TPA. For Texas, the top 10 players in plate appearances are:
Player TPA Note -------- --- ----------------------------- Arod 345 There every day Raffy 298 Should have played less M Young 270 Played behind Catalonotto Rusty 218 Injured, 17 RBI Perry 203 Played behind Blalock Gabe 189 Platoons and injury Lamb 178 Minors, platoons, defensive risk Juando 176 Injury, 18 RBI Everett 158 Injury, 18 RBI Haselman 157 Plays behind Pudge
It looks like several of the Rangers best players aren't even on this list. Pudge will pass Haselman within a week. Heck, who IS this team's center fielder?
To summarize:
300+ TPA - 1 player
250+ TPA - 2 players
200+ TPA - 2 players
Let's compare that to the rest of the AL West
200 250 300 TOT RUNS Tex 2 2 1 5 379 Sea 1 3 4 8 405 Ana 3 1 5 9 418 Oak 2 2 2 6 382
I would agree that having a dependable lineup isn't the same thing as having a good lineup. You can run some tomato cans and antenna balls out there every day and get a lot of plate appearances[1]. This table seems to indicate that there is a correlation between having a stable lineup and scoring runs in the AL West.
My point is that Juan Gonzalez is 25 PA away from 200, and that 9 Angels are already past that. Several of these players are in the equivalent of the latter half of May, and the rest of the league is a month ahead of them.
It is not quite as simple to decide what to do about it. If you managed the Rangers, which players would you send out there every day?
RF Juando
CF Lutwick, Everett
LF Mench, Greer, Everett, Catalanotto
3B Perry, Blalock
SS ARod
2B Young, Catalanotto
1B Palmeiro
C Pudge
DH Lamb, Greer, Kapler, Catalanotto
Everything is related to everything. That truism is painfully obvious when one realizes that durability, talent, coaching, and mental outlook are all related to the team's performance, and that you can't change one without having some impact on the others. The Rangers have struggled for all of those reasons this season, and stopping the bleeding won't be as simple as filling out the lineup card with your nine best hitters. But wouldn't that be an easy first step?
Maybe some other time I'll take a look at the bullpen and starting pitching - it wouldn't surprise me to see the team with the least injuries win because I hear that it happens every year.
[1] Maybe not. A tomato can and an antenna ball will probably tend to walk a lot.